Borderlands: Prisoners of War

Join us on Thursday, June 11 at 6:00pm as Dr. Sarah Whitt (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) discusses her upcoming book project, Prisoners of War: An Indigenous History of Captivity, Memory, and Freedom in the United States. Prisoners of War reframes Indigenous experiences of incarceration in the U.S. as an affective and material history of captivity. From forced removal west to Indian Territory, to the creation of the reservation system and mass incarceration in the twenty-first century, tribal nations have negotiated and resisted subordination to U.S. authority for centuries. The methods of confinement and incarceration may have shifted over time, but the idea of the Indigenous criminal, outlaw, or fugitive has persisted in the cultural lexicon of America --- as have ongoing fights for Indigenous sovereignty and freedom. Prisoners of War examines diverse experiences, stories, and landscapes of captivity from the standpoint of the Indigenous peoples and tribes who endured them.

About the Speaker:
Dr. Sarah Whitt is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and a faculty member in the Department of Global and International Studies with a formal affiliation in the History Department at the University of California Irvine.

After receiving her PhD at UC Berkeley, she accepted a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History Department at UC Riverside, which she held before joining UC Irvine as a faculty member. Her research contributes to the interdisciplinary fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Native American History, Settler Colonial Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Disability Studies, Carceral Studies, and other conversations. An expert in 20th century Native American history, she brings a passion for the study of the past to her work in the classroom, linking historical inquiry with the present.

This event is free and open to the public.