Professor Juliana Hu Pegues will discuss her recent book, Space-Time Colonialism: Alaska’s Indigenous and Asian Entanglements, published by University of North Carolina Press as part of their Critical Indigeneities series. As the enduring "last frontier," Alaska proves an indispensable context for examining the form and function of American colonialism, particularly in the shift from western continental expansion to global empire. Space-Time Colonialism evaluates four key historical periods in U.S.-Alaskan history: the Alaskan purchase, the Gold Rush, the emergence of salmon canneries, and the World War II era, through colonial and racial entanglements between Alaska Native peoples and Asian immigrants. In the midst of this complex interplay, the American colonial project advanced by differentially racializing and gendering Indigenous and Asian peoples, constructing Asian immigrants as "out of place" and Alaska Natives as "out of time." Counter to this space-time colonialism, Native and Asian peoples created alternate modes of meaning and belonging through their literature, photography, political organizing, and sociality. Offering an intersectional approach to U.S. empire, Indigenous dispossession, and labor exploitation, Space-Time Colonialism makes clear that Alaska is essential to understanding both U.S. imperial expansion and the machinations of settler colonialism.

Juliana Hu Pegues joins the faculty at Cornell University this fall as an associate professor in the Department of Literatures in English, and also as an affiliate faculty member with the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program and the Asian American Studies Program.

Her work broadly examines the intersections and contingencies of indigeneity, race, gender, and sexuality in North America through historical and literary constructions. She is the author of Space-Time Colonialism: Alaska’s Indigenous and Asian Entanglements (UNC Press, 2021) and she is co-editor, with Manu Karuka and Alyosha Goldstein, of “Colonial Unknowing,” a special issue of the journal Theory & Event. With Michael Viola, Iyko Day, and Dean Saranillio, she is co-editor of a special issue of Critical Ethnic Studies, “Solidarities of Nonalignment: Abolition, Decolonization, and Anti-Capitalism.” Before her career as an academic, Juliana spent close to two decades as a community-based artist and activist.

Part of AIIS 6010, Fridays 12:25 – 2:20 pm / hosted by Professor Jolene Rickard (Ska:rù:rę'/Tuscarora) / Lectures open to the public

*This lecture will be documented and posted to our website.

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Cornell University is located on Gayog̱hó:nǫ́ (Cayuga Nation) land within Hodinǫhsǫ:i? territories.