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Johns Hopkins University | AS.191.319

Decolonizing Nuclear Politics

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This course explores the imbrication of nuclear weapons and colonialism in global politics. Each stage of nuclear weapons production mobilizes existing colonial relations or creates new sites of coloniality: uranium mining in African colonies, nuclear fuel industries that polluted native lands, and nuclear testing in occupied Pacific Islands. A critical understanding of nuclear politics thus requires a decolonial lens to examine the role of colonial relations, the impact of nuclear industries on marginalized communities, and instances of resistance that envision a nuclear-free and anticolonial future. Towards this goal, the course addresses a series of questions, including: How are nuclear weapons produced, by and for whom? Are nuclear weapons only instruments at the hands of world leaders, or are they already part of everyday realities for historically and currently colonized communities? Can ‘national security’ and ‘strategic calculations’ justify nuclear use and the legacies of nuclear violence? What are instances of resistance that tie together anti-colonial and antinuclear determinations?

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