The Kurds and the territorialization of minorityhood

Drawing on the theoretical underpinnings of Gyanendra Pandey’s work on the construction of minorityhood in India, this article explores how Kurds became a minority in the context of foreign intervention in the Ottoman Empire and how a new discourse surrounding ‘minorities’, citizenship and rights became elements in a wider discourse on modernity, civilization, sovereignty, identity, citizenship and power. This article ultimately traces the minoritization of the Kurds and how Kurds became minoritized after, but along with, Armenians. Of particular interest in the present study is how fresh thinking in the field of borderlands history can help illuminate other angles of the minoritization process, here, namely, its connection to territoriality. Thus, here I add to Pandey’s concept of ‘marked citizenship’ to reflect on what I call ‘marked territoriality’ as the companion feature in the process of making minorities. I also suggest that the case study I explore in this article may help us tweak the periodization of territoriality itself.

Introduction

The introduction begins with the story of Bull Back Fat, a Blackfoot chief who visited both American and British fur traders in 1832 to remind them of their obligations to Blackfoot people. Bull Back Fat was one in a long line of savvy Blackfoot diplomats who, between 1720 and 1877, used the unique borderlands geography of Blackfoot homelands to preserve their influence, sovereignty, and way of life. By telling the story of the three Blackfoot nations (Siksika, Kainai, and Piikani) and their engagement with colonial change, this book contributes to growing scholarly conversations on Indigenous agency, borderlands history, and early North American history.

A Borderlands History of Latinx Cinema

This article focuses on cinematic representations of the Latinx experience of the B/borderlands over the course of five distinct periods: silent cinema (1900s–1920s), commercial sound cinema (1930s–1960s), social problem films (1930s–1950s), New Latinx cinema (1970s), mainstream televisual cinema (1980s–1990s), and cinema in the digital age (2000s–present). Throughout her book Borderlands / La Frontera, Anzaldúa associates lowercase borderlands with destructive confrontations, and uppercase Borderlands with productive transformations. By this double definition, cinematic representations of the Latinx borderlands with a lowercase b have always dominated the big screen via Latinx characters who are either negative stereotypes or simply absent. But even as early as the silent period there have been attempts to represent the complex and oftentimes contradictory perspectives of the Latinx experience of the Borderlands with a capital B, where the switching of cultural, cinematic, and linguistic codes creates a new language: the language of a Borderlands cinema.

“Skilful Jockies” and “Good Sadlers”

This chapter introduces and assesses the roles horses played in the economies and societies of eighteenth-century southeastern Indians. Villagers throughout the region found horses essential in hunting, trade, and war. If the future of borderlands history centers partly on issues of spatial mobility and ambiguities of power, then horses are especially relevant to borderlands scholarship. In the early South, horses facilitated cross-cultural and economic exchanges while undermining the structures of authority for both Indians and whites. A closer look at the interrelationship between Indians, horses, and the environment affords new insights into borderlands history by underscoring how human and animal mobility not only complicated territorial boundaries and cross-cultural interactions but also subtly modified the socioeconomic foundations and ecological landscape of southeastern Indians.