A comparison of the experiences of indigenous children who were removed from their homes through government policies in the American West and Australia is the focus of the next Paul A. Olson Seminar in Great Plains Studies.
"Colonizing the Senses: New Sensory Regimes in Boarding Schools for Indigenous Children on the Great Plains and in Australia, 1880-1940," is the title of the talk Nov. 17 by Margaret Jacobs, professor of history and director of women's and gender studies at UNL. Jacobs was the winner of the 2010 Bancroft Prize for her book, "White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940," published in 2009 by the University of Nebraska Press.
Jacobs will share a part of the book that examines how institutions in both nations aimed to sever the connections between indigenous children and their homelands through replacing the children's prior sensory conceptions of season and place with new sensory regimes founded on abstract notions of time and space.
In addition to the Bancroft Prize, Jacobs received two more awards: the Robert G. Athearn Prize sponsored by the Western History Association for the best book on the 20th-century American West, and the Armitage-Jameson Prize sponsored by the Coalition for Western Women's History for the best book in western women's history.
The lecture begins at 3:30 p.m. in the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q St. Jacobs' talk and a 3 p.m. reception are free and open to the public. This lecture is also part of the UNL Women's and Gender Studies Colloquium Series.
For more information, go to http://www.unl.edu/plains or call 472-3082.
- Linda Ratcliffe, Center for Great Plains Studies
More details at: http://go.unl.edu/d7w