University Campuses as Settler-Colonial Pedagogical Tools

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 4
  In Roundtable Session: Sites of Struggle, Resistance, and Power: Decolonizing Schools and Universities (Table 9)

Abstract

In a colonial world order, land-grab universities have always been a part of the settler project for land extraction and capital accumulation. This paper demonstrates how the settler university’s conquest for land enacts not just material but also pedagogical work in the production of frontier imaginations and securing settler futurity. By examining how the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) produces pedagogical space, particularly through their newest building, Franklin Antonio Hall, this paper demonstrates how university campuses are intentionally designed to direct affective, creative, and intellectual energies toward settler colonial desires. If we think of the frontier as a dynamic process, university campuses function as pedagogical frontiers for settling in colonial grammars of land and space.

Author

• Vandhana Ravi, University of California - San Diego