05/01/2026
Fall 2026 grad seminar:
Course Description
“The term ‘racial capitalism’ requires its users to recognize that capitalism is racial capitalism,” explains Jodi Melamed. Building on Cedric Robinson’s analysis, Robin D.G. Kelley writes that “Race and gender are not incidental or accidental features of the global capitalist order, they are constitutive. Capitalism emerged as a racial and gendered regime… The secret to capitalism’s survival is racism, and the racial and patriarchal state.” Thus, to speak of racial capitalism is to acknowledge that, in Kelley’s words, “Capitalism developed and operates within a racial system or racial regime. Racism is fundamental for the production and reproduction of violence, and that violence is necessary for creating and maintaining capitalism.” This graduate seminar asks what is at stake in approaching the study of capitalism in this way. How might an analysis of colonialism and imperialism, disability, environmental justice, the bordering of nation-states, and global migration/displacement further inform or incorporate this analysis? Students are introduced to the theorization of racial capitalism as well as to scholarship critically engaged in rethinking and expanding the embodied, social, and geopolitical frames through which racial capitalism has been analyzed. In addition to writing by Melamed, Kelley, and Robinson, course readings include texts by Joanne Barker, Brenna Bhandar, Gargi Bhattacharyya, Lisa Marie Cacho, Andrew Curley, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Carmen Gonzalez, Saidiya Hartman, Jodi Kim, Manu Karuka, Justin Leroy, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Jennifer Morgan, Robert Nichols, Liliana Obregón, Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Harsha Walia, and Rocío Zambrana.
01/30/2026
Not to be missed!
Lisa Marie Cacho speaking at UNM for the American Studies 2026 Joel Jones Lecture!!!
“'It’s Not Even Loaded': Suicide-by-Cop or Indigenous Self-Defense?"
Hodgin Hall
Thursday, February 12
4:30 - 6:30pm
11/14/2023
UNM American Studies Department presents:
Alex Lubin (former department chair of UNM American Studies)
Professor of African American Studies at Penn State University
"An African-American Novel in Nigeria: Duse Mohamed Ali's Ere Roosevelt Came (1934) and the Making of Literary Pan-Africanism"
Monday, November 20th, 2-4 PM
Frank Waters Room, Zimmerman Library
The University of New Mexico - UNM
11/08/2023
UNM American Studies Department PhD student Nathan Leach speaking about his outstanding dissertation "The Social Matter of Opioids" as part of the Bilinski Dissertation Fellowship colloquium this afternoon.
10/26/2023
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=712662894223289&set=a.459627022860212
The Newberry Consortium in American Indian Studies is hosting an Open House (In-person) on Tuesday, October 31st, 2023. The event will be held from 1:00p.m. to 3:00p.m (MDT) in the Waters Room in Zimmerman Library on the UNM Albuquerque Main Campus.
The Newberry Consortium in American Indian Studies is a cornerstone of Native and Indigenous research and education at UNM for both graduate students and faculty. Come to our open house to hear UNM-NCAIS fellows share their experiences with NCAIS workshops, summer institutions, and conferences and learn how you can become involved in this academic development opportunity.
This event is hosted by Samuel Truett, Associate Professor of History, and Jennifer Denetdale, Professor of American Studies.
Light refreshments will be provided.
For any questions, please contact us at [email protected]
10/11/2023
UNM American Studies Department Graduate Student Research Panel, Friday, October 20th @ 12noon
10/08/2023
The UNM American Studies Department presents
// States of Emergency: A Spatial History of the French Colonial Continuum //
A Talk by Léopold Lambert
Tuesday, October 17
5:30pm
Garcia Honda Auditorium
George Pearl Hall
2401 Central Ave SE
University of New Mexico
Léopold Lambert is a trained architect living in Paris. He is the editor-in-chief of The Funambulist and the author of four books examining architecture's violence and its participation in the implementation of settler colonialism and structural racism.
In this talk, Lambert will present his most recent book (soon to be translated into English) entitled States of Emergency: A Spatial History of the French Colonial Continuum (2021). Through the examination of three space-time of anticolonial insurrections (1954-1962 Algeria, 1984-1988 Kanaky, and 2005-2020 Banlieues in France), he develops the concept of "colonial continuum" (i.e. a colonial space-time surface) by adding the political role of the built environment to historical analyses.
Sponsored by the Department of American Studies, School of Architecture + Planning, French Program, and the International Studies Institute.
10/04/2023
"We should not fear for our lives when we speak out against injustices, racism and hate." UNM American studies chair Jennifer Denetdale's article about the shooting during the gathering to celebrate the postponement of the reinstallation of the Juan de Oñate statue in Espanola.
Jennifer Denetdale: Four centuries of state sanctioned terror against Indigenous peoples
The shooting of Jacob Johns is yet another act of terror that Indigenous people who live in New Mexico must navigate every day.
04/11/2026
10/26/2023
10/11/2023
10/08/2023
10/04/2023