What is an inter/nationalist genre and form? How is it defined and visualized? Might we think of “inter/nationalism” as a refusal of “national” recognition in the neoliberal, capitalist order?

In the vein of Audra Simpson’s writing on the refusal of settler citizenship (Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States, 2014) and Steven Salaita’s connection between Palestine and Indigenous American solidarities (Inter/Nationalism: Decolonizing Native America and Palestine, 2016), this seminar broadens the concept of “inter/nationalism” and its relevance to visual and literary cultures around the world. In the era of genocide, settler colonial occupation, imperial expansion, environmental damage, and socially regressive policies, how do visual culture and literature make possible a different conception of Indigenous sovereignty, solidarity, and self-determination through inter/nationalism?

“Inter/nationalism” has served as a point of reference to understand how Indigenous people around the world reframe, rebuild, reimagine, restructure, and reworld their relationship to other Indigenous and oppressed people. For example, delegations of Indigenous people of Turtle Island (U.S.) have participated in solidarity tours in Palestine to sympathize with the Palestinian struggle and to discuss mutual support. Stories, poetry, art, and photographs have emerged out of these encounters.

The seminar invites scholars to discuss the many figurations and definitions of “inter/nationalist” visual culture and literature in practice, theory, and method. A study of “inter/nationalist” visual and literary cultures is a generative start to trace how Indigenous communities forge autonomous spaces in physical, conceptual, and imaginary spaces. The visual and literary language, aesthetics, and experiences of “inter/nationalisms” challenge and refuse modern ideas of citizenship in favor of a different kind of belonging and humanity.

The seminar solicits papers that explore a range of media, literary genres, world contexts, time periods, languages, and experiences. Possible topics for this seminar, but not limited to the list, include:

Incommensurable inter/nationalisms, inter/nationalism in the settler colony
Futuristic, utopic and dystopic, and interstitial inter/nationalisms
Revitalization, reforestation, re-Indigenization, rematriation
De facto communities and spaces of inter/nationalism
Extrajudicial, extraterritorial histories and experience 

Diasporic, displaced, and dispossessed communities

For questions, please contact Michael Anthony Turcios at [email protected]