workshops & lectures

Considering two early-twentieth century instances of print culture on the northwest coast, this lecture explores the ways the printed page can serve as an affordance for cycles of public and political appeal and remembrance. Juxtaposing the anti-colonial uses of a missionary printing press by Nisga’a printers with the marginalia in an Archbishop’s library of texts on psychic research, I show the changing meanings of the revolutionary spirit in a land of contested sovereignties.

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“Protest on the Page: Print as an Affordance for Revolutionary Spirits,” Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, October 25, 2017.

In the Royal Proclamation of 1763, King George III used his “spiritual jurisdiction” to guarantee that Indigenous peoples owned their lands that they had not ceded by treaty. It continues to be cited by Indigenous peoples as a “foundational document” ensuring their territorial rights. This lecture examines the significance of the Royal Proclamation as a material artifact and a “metaphysical” legal document, to use John Borrows’ term.

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“Public Memory and Indigenous Sovereignty: The Afterlives of the Royal Proclamation of 1763” Department of Religious Studies, University of Waterloo, November 2, 2016.

This public lecture was part of the Wabash Grant-funded Religion and Health Symposium.

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“Religion and Medicine as Techniques of Intervention in the Lives of Others” Department of Religious Studies, Missouri State University, October 27, 2016.