Ileana Rodriguez-Silva (History)

Kiko Benitez (Comparative Literature)

Rick Bonus (American Ethnic Studies)

This lecture series will explore the intricate and vast flows of peoples, ideas, commodities, and structures that inform the constitution of subjectivities within imperial fields. Through the analysis of state policies, literary works, emerging mass media, and political/social activism, among other means, collaborators seek to unearth the contradictory aesthetic and ethical values, identities, and individual subjectivities forged in the constant processes of negotiation and contestation brought about by imperial organization.

The project particularly focuses on the converging forces that fuel the constant shifts and refashioning of the power fields comprising the imperial terrain. In order to investigate the shifting nature of empire, and the technologies used and cultures produced in its constitutive processes, collaborators center on the study of the U.S. imperial fields at different historical junctures: the 1898 war, mid-twentieth century decolonization processes, and the 2003 Iraq conflict.

Ann Stoler
(Anthropology, The New School)
"Along the Archival Grain: Thinking through Colonial Ontologies"

Download E-flyer (pdf)

November 16
Lecture at 1:00 pm, CMU 120
Conversatorio at 3:45 pm, CMU 202

Conversatorio readings
Readings are available through the UW Libraries online catalog and at the Simpson Center (CMU 206).

Ann Laura Stoler with David Bond, "Refractions Off Empire: Untimely Comparisons in Harsh Times," Radical History Review 95 (Spring 2006): 93-107.
Available from UW Libraries

Ann Laura Stoler, "On Degrees of Imperial Sovereignty," Public Culture 18 (1): 125-146.
Available from UW Libraries

Sponsored by the Department of History, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Institute for Transnational Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, and the Simpson Center for the Humanities.


Julian Go
(Sociology, Boston University)
"Imperial Signs: Power and Meaning in American Empire, 1898-1912"

January 29, 2008
2:30 pm
Miller 301

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Greg Grandin
(History, New York University)
"Empire's Workshop:
Latin America, the United States, & the Rise of the New Imperialism"

February 28, 2008
2:30 pm
Miller 301
Reception to follow in Smith 306

Conversatorio with Grandin
February 29, 2008
11:30 pm
Communications 202

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Vicente M. Diaz
(Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies, University of Michigan)
"Traditional Carolinian Voyaging and the Indigenous Critique of Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse"

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April 21, 2008
3:30 pm
Communications 226

"A Conversation with Professor Vicente M. Diaz and UW Pacific Islander American Students"

April 22, 2008
7:00 pm
Ethnic Cultural Center