Global Studies

John Collins

Associate Professor of Global Studies John Collins received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society from the University of Minnesota, where he was a MacArthur Scholar. He has a B.A. in Religious Studies from Wesleyan University. He has been teaching Global Studies at St. Lawrence since the department’s inception in 2000 and is currently serving as Department Chair. He teaches regularly in the First-Year Program and is a member of the African Studies Advisory Board at SLU.

Collins’ scholarly interests primarily concern the global politics of violence and the

Occupied by Memory

representation of violence. He has a longstanding interest in Palestine, where he lived in 1996-97 while conducting field research for his Ph.D. dissertation. His book Occupied by Memory: The Intifada Generation and the Palestinian State of Emergency (New York University Press, 2004) is an ethnographic study of memory, nationalism and generational identity in the context of the first Palestinian intifada. (Read the Table of Contents and Prologue.)

Collateral Language

He is also the co-editor, with Ross Glover, of Collateral Language: A User’s Guide to America’s New War (New York University Press, 2002), a collection of essays critically examining the rhetoric used to justify US foreign policy after the September 11 attacks. The book has been translated into Spanish and Italian and contains Collins’ essay on the word “Terrorism.”

In addition to his ongoing public intellectual work on the Weave and elsewhere, he is currently researching and writing about the globalization of Palestine and the Palestinianization of the globe.

In his spare time, Collins is a singer-songwriter who also plays bass in a band called Love Insurgency. He is a devoted fan of Mark Eitzel and his band, American Music Club.

Recent publications and presentations

“Dromocratic Palestine.” Middle East Report 248 (Fall 2008).
“Confinement Under an Open Sky: Following the Speed Trap from Guernica to Gaza and Beyond.” Forthcoming in Globalizations (2009).
“Occupation, Resistance and the Logic of Speed.” Paper presented at the international conference on New Worlds, New Sovereignties, University of Melbourne, June 2008.
“A Dream Deterred: Palestine from Total War to Total Peace.” Paper presented at the Fifth Galway Conference on Colonialism, National University of Ireland, Galway, June 2007.
“From Portbou to Palestine and Back.” Social Text 24, 4 (Winter 2006): 66-85.
“Global Palestine: A Collision for Our Time.” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 16, 1 (Winter 2007): 3-18.
“We ought to rewrite the Mideast script,” Albany Times-Union, February 1, 2007. Available here.
“The Low Profile: CNN and the New York Times Execute a Denial of History,” Electronic Iraq, December 31, 2006. Available here.
“Moral Chronologies: Generation and Popular Memory in a Palestinian Refugee Camp,” in Engaged Observer: Anthropology, Advocacy and Activism, ed. Victoria Sanford and Asale Ajani (Rutgers University Press, 2006).
Review of Laetitia Bucaille, Growing Up Palestinian: Israeli Occupation and the Intifada Generation (Princeton University Press, 2004), in Journal of Palestine Studies 34, 3 (Spring 2005). Read the review.

Courses taught at SLU

Introduction to Global Studies I: Political Economy
Secrets and Lies: Nationalism, Violence and Memory
Research Methods in Global Studies
Theories of Cultural Studies
Palestinian Identities
Global News Analysis
Global Palestine
Global Questions, Local Action (SLU First-Year Program)
Decolonizing America (SLU First-Year Program)
Terror Alert! Understanding Collateral Language (SLU First-Year Program)
“This Machine Kills Fascists”: Exploring Protest Music (SLU First-Year Program)

Recommended sites