Laura Terrance

Laura Terrance

Laura Terrance

Office: 1120 Rolfe Hall

Email: akweterra@gmail.com

Biography

Laura Terrance is a doctoral candidate in Gender Studies with a Master of Arts in Ethnic Studies. Her dissertation examines the representation of violence in Indigenous film and literature as effective expressions of resistance that decry the terms of neo-liberal subjectivity while refusing the terms of settler colonialization. Beyond challenging each of these conditions, however, the violence her project examines provides the opportunity for the development of an anti-colonial subjectivity reformulated as a direct result of the violence enacted – a subjectivity positioned to imagine an alternative future. The analyses used to formulate her larger argument take into account and incorporate Haudenosaunee epistemologies of the “warrior” (Rotiskenrakéh:te), whose first obligation is to maintain peace, but who also understands that the imperative to protect the people cannot exclude the possibility of physical violence.

Research Interests

Indigenous Studies; Native Feminisms; Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Film and Politics; Sovereignty and Self-Determination; Historical Archives and Research Methodology; Social Theory, Epistemology and Ontology, Literature and Literary Theory