OSUN Themes: Democratic Practice; Human Rights
Colonial Encounters. Registration is CLOSED for this summer session.
Term: June 4, 2024 – July 10, 2024Level: 300-Level
Day/Time: Tuesday; Wednesday 9:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Instructor: Uzi Baram, Bard College
As museums claim to be decolonizing, speakers and organizations create land acknowledgments, and other confrontations with the legacies of colonialism enter popular discourse, understanding colonialism matters more than ever. From the late 1400s onward, diverse, mostly traumatic, cultural encounters accompanied European expansion across the world, which legitimated understandings of peoples across the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Colonialism as a formal system of governance has retreated but the uneven power relations, particularly as related to intellectual endeavors and policies, continue. Historically and geographically wide‑ranging, this course explores how the asymmetric patterns of interactions then imposed are sustained in the present, including by globalization and tourism as well as resisted and being transformed. We will discuss and analyze theory on the development of the modern world, recognize the intersection of colonialism and climate, use ethnographies on social identity under colonialism, and debates colonial legacies.
Credits: 3 US / 6 ECTS