The U.S. Virgin Islands: The History of Danish and US Colonialism

Made up of the main islands of Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas, the U.S. Virgin Islands has remained under colonial rule since Danish invasion in the latter 1600s.  In this episode, Dr. Hadiya Sewer historicizes local revolutions and reception to the USVI's longstanding occupation, also highlighting the effects of American colonialism over last century.

Hadiya Sewer is a Research Fellow in the African and African American Studies Program at Stanford University and a Visiting Scholar in the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. Dr. Sewer's work uses a non-sovereign territory in the Caribbean, the United States Virgin Islands, as a case study for tracing the conceptions of freedom and the human that exist under contemporary colonialism. Sewer earned their Ph.D. in Africana Studies at Brown University. Their scholarship focuses on environmental justice and Africana decolonial, feminist, queer, and political theories. They are currently working on two monographs titled, “(De)Colonial Desires: Blackness, Aporia, and the Afterlives of the Dead,” and "Black as Nature: Climate Disaster, Covid-19, and the Coloniality of Power." Dr. Sewer's research, teaching, and advocacy provide phenomenological, ethnographic, and historical examinations of anti-blackness, colonialism, imperialism, and the climate crisis. As a community-engaged scholar, Sewer is also the President and Co-Founder of St.JanCo: the St. John Heritage Collective, a land rights and cultural heritage preservation nonprofit in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands and a founding member of the Virgin Islands Studies Collective. Follow Dr. Sewer on Twitter and Instagram.

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