Political Theories of Decolonization

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course turns to the renewed attention to decolonization in political theory, intellectual history, and social theory with two purposes in mind. First, it seeks to understand recent work on state formation, constitutionalism, popular sovereignty, and development revises and reconfigures the political dilemmas confronted by most of the world after the end of formal European empires. Second, it examines how the context and lens of decolonization and postcolonial social formations might help us to rethink and reframe key concepts of political theory including democracy and sovereignty. This is reading intensive course focused on recent works rather than primary texts.