Richmond History Professor and Richmond graduate co-write article

21/09/2011

Dom Alessio (Professor of History and Director of the Study Abroad program) and Kristen Meredith (a Richmond History graduate who went onto Cambridge University to complete her M. Phil and is now reading for a Ph.D. in History at Cambridge), have co-written an article on James Cameron’s film Avatar. Entitled “Decolonising Pandora: Rethinking Empire Using Science Fiction and James Cameron’s Avatar (2009)”, they examine the film in light of the social-political context in which it was written, demonstrating the director’s highly-charged critique of US foreign policy. Their paper also argues that the depiction of the alien native species remains problematic from a postcolonial perspective whilst addressing the ways that the film has been used for political ends by peoples throughout the world. The article concludes by underlining a need to rethink radically traditional definitions of empire. The paper has been accepted for publication with the Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History (John Hopkins University Press) with a likely publication date of 2012.

Link to this page: http://www.richmond.ac.uk/n/1192.aspx