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Many people are aware that the United States and Canada, as settler colonies, were established through genocidal policies towards indigenous populations. What is less generally understood is that settler colonialism is not a thing of the past; it is an ongoing process that shapes everything from contemporary systems of gender and sexuality to hegemonic notions of 'race,' understandings of time and space, environmental and energy policies, knowledge production, and last but not least North American literature and culture.
In this course, we will investigate central aspects of North American settler colonialism in its past and present manifestations. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which it structures gender and sexuality, and the manner in which it is informed by dominant European American gender discourses in turn.
The objective of settler colonial studies is not merely academic. Rather, indigenous struggles for sovereignty and decolonization, which are at the heart of the field, require European Americans and Europeans to think critically about our own social positions and our perhaps inadvertent reproduction of settler colonial discourses, for instance through cultural appropriation. The popularity of Karl May, of Winnetou movies, Native-themed carnival costumes, "Western-style" theme parks and the like suggest that this is very much an issue important not only for European Americans, but for Germans as well. |
