Dedman College News
Originally Posted: July 8, 2019
History Professor John Chávez of SMU organized and chaired a panel for the World History Association’s annual conference held in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on June 29, 2019. Presenting with him were John Mwangi Githigaro of St. Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya, and Dittmar Schorkowitz of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany.
The panel, especially Schorkowitz’s paper, briefly compared continental and overseas colonialism together with other forms, such as settler, internal, neo-, and post-colonialism, concepts that have developed into distinct theories within the larger colonial paradigm in world history. Mwangi’s paper investigated the enduring legacies of colonial rule including the related practices, strategies, and mechanisms of political control in Kenya and Rwanda after independence.
Chávez’spaper, using ethnic Mexicans in the United States as a case study, examined the possibilities for decolonization–autonomy, assimilation, or continuing marginalization of a people residing mainly from California to Texas, lands once part of Mexico–an indigenous population nonetheless considered perpetually alien.
The papers reflect a forthcoming collection–co-edited by Schorkowitz,Chávez, and Ingo Schröder–tentatively titled the “Shifting Forms of Continental Colonialism” to be published by Palgrave Macmillan (2019).