Rowland Keshena Robinson

Areas of Specialization

• Indigenous Critical Theory
• Indigenous Identity and Politics
• Settler Colonialism, Franchise Colonialism, and Imperialism
• Dispossession and Primitive Accumulation
• Theories of Sovereignty
• Coloniality and Decoloniality
• Poststructuralist Theory
• Marxist Theory
• Race, Racism, and Racialization
• Theories of Ideology, Narrative, and Mythmaking
• Ethnographic and Autoethnographic Methodologies
• The Politics of Recognition and Refusal
• Fascism and Antifascism

Background

BA in Anthropology (2010 Waterloo) | MA in Public Issues Anthropology (2011 Waterloo) | PhD in Sociology (2020 Waterloo)

Rowland Keshena Robinson (he/him/his) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. A member of the Menominee Nation of Wisconsin, he has lived and worked on the lands of the Menominee’s close kin the Anishinaabeg, as well as the Rotinonshón:ni, in what is now known as southern Ontario since 2005.

Raised on the island of Bermuda by his Menominee mother and Anglo-Bermudian father, he moved to Canada in 2005 to pursue undergraduate studies initially in the natural sciences before transitioning to the humanistic and social scientific disciplines. Following a period of time off after his MA he returned to Canada in 2014 to study for, and eventually receive, a PhD in sociology. His dissertation, entitled Settler Colonialism + Native Ghosts: An Autoethnographic Account of the Imaginarium of Late Capitalist/Colonialist Storytelling, pursued an indigenous, decolonial, and anthropological account of the formation, function, and circulation of Nativeness within the philosophical, racial, lego-political, semiotic, and narrative regimes of United States and Canadian settler colonialism.

Following the completion of his PhD he has worked on publications, including a chapter entitled “Diaspora, Settler Colonial Borders, and Indigenous Internationalism” in the forthcoming Wilfrid Laurier University Press Volume The Other Border (edited by Jasmin Habib and Jane Desmond). He also has in-progress co-authored projects with Dr Jasmin Habib of the Department of Political Science (“When There is No Outside: Writing Palestinian & Native North American Autoethnography”) and Brian Schram of the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies (“Haunted Revolutionaries: Aesthetic Politics and Ruptural Violence in the Post-Truth Era”). He is also presently working on a number of sole-authored pieces, including, but not limited to “Unmasking the Real of Recognition: Treaties and Rights as an Ideological Complex,” “Heidegger and Marx: Antisemitism, Coloniality, and the Grounds of Critique,” and “Escaping Settler Time: Native Cultural Production in the Era of Late Colonialism.” He has also written on the topic of fascism and anti-fascism in contemporary political discourse and activism, and the relationship of both to colonialism, settler colonialism, and decolonization.

Prior to joining the Department of Political Science full-time in the Summer of 2022 Rowland had previously worked as a sessional in the department, as well as in Global Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel University College, and Social Development Studies at Renison University College. He also taught in Indigenous Studies at St. Paul’s University College and served as the Coordinator of the Indigenous Studies Minor Program.

• 2024. "Fascism and Antifascism: A Decolonial Perspective." In Three Way Fight: Revolutionary Politics and Antifascism, edited by Xtn Alexander and Matthew N. Lyons. Montreal, QC and Oakland, CA: Kersplebedeb / PM Press.
• 2024. "Unravelling Settler Ideology: Navigating Treaty Dynamics in Settler-Colonial Contexts." Settler Colonial Studies October: 1–19.
• In-Press. “Indigenous Diaspora, Identity, and Settler Colonial Borders,” Review of International American Studies. (expected publication: Fall 2025).

• A Distant Red-Shift Discord: Settler Colonialism and the Cartography of Savagery.
• Of Savages and Simulations: Late Colonialism and the Commodity-Image of the Indian.
• In the Shadow of Modernity: Within, Against, and Beyond Critical Theory’s Colonial Legacies.

• “Beyond MAGA: Nostalgic Settler Sentiment, the Frontier, and the Radical Right's Quest for White Independence.” To be published in a presently untitled edited volume on Settler Colonialism Fascism edited by J. Kēhaulani Kauanui.

• PSCI 228: Introduction to Indigenous Political Thought
• PSCI 326: Multiculturalism and Democracy: Within, Against, and Beyond
• PSCI 362: Government and Politics of Indigenous Peoples
• PSCI 368: Global Discourses of Colonialism
• PSCI 462: Contemporary Indigenous Political Theory

• 2024: University of Waterloo Accredited Sole Supervisory Privilege (SSPS) Status Awarded

PhD Dissertation Supervision

• 2023 – Committee Member, Nicole Burns (Global Governance)
• 2024 – 2024 - Internal-External Examiner, Elianne El-Amyouni (English Language and Literature)

Master’s Thesis Supervision

• 2024 – Supervisor, Ethan MacDonald (Political Science)
• 2024 – Second Reader, Ananya Vohra (Global Governance)

Outside of UW, I serve as a member of the Advisory Board for The Johns Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory (formerly The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism). The original Guide has long been a major peer-reviewed reference text, and so this an effort to reshape into an even more comprehensive guide to Critical and Cultural Theory, and not just Literary Theory. It will be published annually in a digital format by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Anyone wishing a meeting, or to otherwise connect, with Rowland should please email him at one of the addresses listed below.

Email: rowland.robinson@uwaterloo.ca // r4robins@uwaterloo.ca

Office: Hagey Hall 307