Mission Statement

Insurrect! is an online publication devoted to anti-colonial frameworks and critiques of racial capitalism in Early American Studies.

 

Insurrect! publishes writing related to the historical and cultural legacies of colonialism in the Americas and Atlantic World, broadly defined. Our publications confront colonial violence, capitalism, and white supremacy in the present, and honor the legacy of anti-colonial movements in the history of the Americas. Insurrect follows the paradigm shifts of Black Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Disability Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Queer Theory, and serves as a resource for activists and educators who recognize that the historical and material conditions of the present are untenable. We prioritize the work of early career scholars or precarious scholars.

Insurrect! is committed to an unblinking confrontation with the power relations of settler mythmaking. For this reason, this publication centers Black and Indigenous liberation as anchored deep in the past. As the organizers and writers of Insurrect!, we recognize that activists and scholars have been writing and theorizing anti-colonial histories of the early Americas since the beginnings of European imperialism and settler colonialism in the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America. In short, we are—by far—not the first writers to elevate these ideas; however, we find it necessary to hold up Black and Indigenous liberation frameworks as an intervention into the more formal academic field of Early American Studies. 

Early American Studies has long been a prop for white nationalist fantasies of the United States as an imperialist project. For generations, literary scholars and historians have reproduced teleological stories of empire: that it was inevitable Indigenous peoples would lose their lands and cultures when confronted by European settlers, that slavery was an aberration or departure from modern “liberal” mores destined to win in the end, that the American imperialist settlements were established as progressive cities on a hill, and that American history could only have resulted in the rise of the United States as a global hegemon. In our current moment, the future of early American history and literary studies is threatened by austerity and colonial hagiographies, inside and outside of the academy. This blog is therefore not just for academics, but for a public eager for radical change in historical writing about the Americas. 

Insurrect! understands the history of African and Indigenous slavery in the Americas as both the crux upon which all threads of American history converge, but also as a history that fundamentally shapes how we read, write, and think in the present. The writing published here is an amicus brief in movements for justice; in sum, we offer revitalized ways of confronting the institutions and historiography that perpetuate violence and inequality in our present.

Our Team

 

Managing Editors:

  • Marisa Budlong, Historic Deerfield

  • Lila O’Leary Chambers, Cambridge University

  • Elise Mitchell, Swarthmore College

  • Fallon Murphy, Boston University

  • Ittai Orr, University of Michigan

  • Elizabeth Polcha, Drexel University

  • Alanna Prince, Northeastern University

Editorial Team Members:

  • Laura McCoy, Northwestern University

  • Efren M. Lopez, San Diego State University, Imperial Valley

  • Amanda Kong, University of California, Davis

  • Bradley Craig, Boston University

  • Adam McNeil, Rutgers University

  • Janine Yorimoto Boldt, Chazen Museum of Art

  • Kimberly Takahata, Villanova University

  • Christofer Rodelo, University of California, Irvine

  • Gabriela Valenzuela, University of California, Los Angeles

FAQs

 

  • “Insurrect!” is a call to action against racist, sexist, and imperialist power in the Americas. We must confront these power relations in the history we write, in our conversations with family and friends, in our organizing communities, and in our classrooms, departments, and research centers. Insurrect! provokes writers and readers to understand insurrection, with all its uncivil connotations and its suggestion of pent-up rage, as a necessary condition for justice, and of change in general. It is finally a directive, encouraging all of us—including the co-organizers of this publication—to translate our writing, teaching, and theorizing into action.

  • To produce ethical and robust accounts of our past, Insurrect!’s model of Early American Studies eschews narrow methodological boundaries and the formal models of academic gatekeeping. The strongest possible challenge to the conservatism of the archive and of the academy is one that is accessible and wide in its scope and in its perspectives; as well as one that does not arbitrarily believe the words, records, and justifications set down by literate colonizers and enslavers over the epistemologies and memories passed down in oral traditions. We embrace methodologies that foreground historically marginalized communities, and recognize that many academic tools and resources are designed for a limited audience. We envision a possible future for Early American Studies in which there is little to no room to rehearse the biographies of colonizers, in which a public demonstration to tear down a colonizer’s monument is more powerful—and more relevant as history-writing—than a conference panel in a hotel attended by a handful of gatekeepers.

  • Insurrect! is for students and teachers seeking new primary sources, new avenues of research, and new motivations for the pursuit of that research in the first place. It is also for activists, writers, and thinkers outside of the formal channels of the education system who see the material conditions of their everyday lives shaped by the oppression of the past. Americans are hungry for a history that can help them understand the material realities of the present: this publication offers one possible answer to that need.

  • The content on this website and blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The details of the license are explained here.

    We encourage readers to share work that appears on Insurrect! Radical Thinking in Early American Studies widely and to use it in their classrooms with attribution. If you use Insurrect! Radical Thinking in Early American Studies’ posts in your scholarly work, please cite it using the citation style most appropriate for your field. Most citation guides provide instructions for how to cite blogs and websites. We have provided some common examples and links to citation guides below.

    CHICAGO

    Footnotes:
    1. Author’s First name, Author’s Last Name, “Post Title,” Insurrect! Radical Thinking in Early American Studies, Month Day, Year of Post, URL.

    Bibliography:
    Insurrect! Radical Thinking in Early American Studies. http://insurrecthistory.org.

    MLA

    Author’ Last Name, Author’s First Name, “Post title.” Insurrect! Radical Thinking in Early American Studies. Date Month Year. Web. Date Accessed (URL).

    APA

    Insurrect! Radical Thinking in Early American Studies. (Year, Month Date). Title of Post [Blog post]. URL.

    If you have any questions please contact us before publishing at insurrect.history@gmail.com

  • Please see our submissions page to share your work with Insurrect!. We look forward to hearing from you.