Joseph A. Massad
Joseph A. Massad is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He is the author of several books, dozens of scholarly articles, and hundreds of op-eds. His books include Colonial Effects: The making of national identity in Jordan, The persistence of the Palestinian question, Desiring Arabs, and Islam in liberalism. His book The age of independence: A global history of settler-colonialism is forthcoming. He is a recipient of a number of research and teaching Awards, including the Lionel Trilling Book Award for his book Desiring Arabs, The University of Pennsylvania’s Scott Nearing Award for Courageous Scholarship, and The Columbia University Faculty...
Settler-Colonialism and the Age of Independence
Notions of independence, self-determination, and national liberation have always been presented as anti-colonial progressive notions, when in fact they were invented by European colonial settlers. The lecture will examine the genealogy of these notions, the centrality of settler-colonialism to their emergence, and how they also came to be adopted by indigenous struggles against colonialism and settler-colonialism.