Our Mission

Postcolonial Networks brings together scholars, activists, and leaders with the urgency of a movement to foster decolonized relationships, innovative scholarship, and social transformation.

Postcolonial Networks Board

Postcolonial studies

Part 2: Armida: Bel canto’s Big and Tenor-Heavy Love Affair with Crusade and the Ever-Luring Trope of Oriental(ist) Exotic

August 18th, 2013|

"A truly imaginative production would have made a conscious effort to question at least some of the cultural stereotypes while this one dressed them all up with abandon."

Postcolonial Readings: Varied, Broad, and Deep

November 9th, 2012|

"I see postcolonialism as a vastly complex and inclusive category that can potentially serve as the umbrella for many other related fields including but not limited to subaltern and indigenous studies."

Decolonizing Universities: Interconnected versus Solitary Thinkers

September 10th, 2012|

"The next generation of scholars will not be satisfied by the staid culture of traditional academia and its rewards separated as they are from all that inspires these emerging scholars. The new generation will not trade on privilege to serve the needs of the elite few."

Michael Nausner, “Hybridity and Negotiated Boundaries Even in Germany: Reflections on the Reception of Postcolonial Theory and Theology.” Journal of Postcolonial Networks Vol. 2, Issue 1 (February 2012): 1-30.

February 27th, 2012|

This article attempts to shed light on the colonial legacy in German society today and to highlight instances of the arrival of postcolonial theory and theology in German academia. The invisibility of the colonial past in Germany is slowly coming to an end at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as demonstrated in the first part of the article. The new awareness is reflected in a growing number of activities highlighting Germany’s participation in the establishment of a colonial world order in the nineteenth century and the remaining effects of this participation.

Global Political Economy & Its Neocolonial Vices: Postcolonial Theological Reflections on Economic Justice

November 17th, 2011|

Colonialism’s economic and racial systems are often seen as relics of the past, systems that ended with formal European occupation. Postcolonial theologies disagree with this assessment. Postcolonial theologies expose and deconstruct the ways in which economic and racial colonial systems persist: through new forms of economic and racial imperialism, often referred to as neo-colonialism. This essay not only explores the effects of neocolonialism on people of color around the world but also suggests how postcolonial theological reflection can help fashion a transnational vision of economic justice in response to global economic hegemony people of color experience and endure worldwide. Scholars concerned with postcolonial subjects should not only deconstruct neo-colonial logic and practices but must also offer a vision of economic justice in response to the inequality and inequity postcolonial subjects consistently confront.

Bassem Shahin, “Albert Cossery’s Revolutionary Poetics of a Poetics of Revolution.” Journal of Postcolonial Networks Vol. 1, Issue 2 (October 2011): 1-41.

October 22nd, 2011|

This essay will attempt to draw out the structural assumptions of the high-profile Egyptian revolution by revisiting a few short stories and novels by the Egyptian francophone novelist and philosopher of revolution, Albert Cossery. Writing between the late 1930s and the turn of the 21st century, Cossery offered a controversial reading of revolution, focusing his critical lens on his native Egypt. The Egyptian context of the 1930s and 40s informed his reading of revolution—Egypt remained under British jurisdiction; Arab and Egyptian Renaissance, and specifically Egyptian surrealism; the end of Turkish rule and the strategic location of Egypt during World War II.