OI Books: Telling Histories of Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Resistances
Today’s post is part of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Omohundro Institute by exploring the OI books that have had an impact on a scholar’s life. I first encountered Francis Jennings’ scathing The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (1975) on September 19, 2008. I know this date not because I have a frighteningly good memory for events a decade past, but because I recently unearthed the syllabus and notes for “Readings in American Indian History” in the sweaty process of relocating my home and office. It was in this graduate seminar in American Studies at Yale University—in the heart of the very New England at which Jennings trained his critique—that I began to think in more concerted ways about the mechanisms of settler colonialism, alternative approaches to Indigenous and early American studies, and the ideological stakes of “doing history.” Read More
