The Biopolitics of Infectious Diseases, Vaccines, and Settler Colonial Whiteness on Lingít Aaní (WGF - Dissertation Fieldwork Grant)
Creators: name: Kersch, Adam
Publisher: name: (:unav)
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Sitka
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/24322/sitka
subject: Southeast Alaska
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/24212/southeast-alaska
subject: United States and Canada
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/85623/united-states-and-canada
subject: Alaska
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/geographic-keyword/19929/alaska
subject: COVID-19 pandemic
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/temporal-keyword/8310/covid-19-pandemic
subject: 1918 influenza epidemic
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/temporal-keyword/8311/1918-influenza-epidemic
subject: whiteness
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/157828/whiteness
subject: Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166866/dissertation-fieldwork-grant
subject: Settler colonialism
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/148712/settler-colonialism
subject: infectious disease
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/144694/infectious-disease
subject: biopolitics
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/157334/biopolitics
subject: vaccines
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/166870/vaccines
subject: Tlingit
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/155883/tlingit
subject: Race
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/other-keyword/27114/race
subject: Ethnographic Research
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/investigation-type/14/ethnographic-research
subject: Ethnohistoric Research
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/investigation-type/17/ethnohistoric-research
subject: Historic Background Research
valueUri: https://core.tdar.org/browse/investigation-type/18/historic-background-research

description: This resource is an application for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. This research project examines transformations in the relationship between race and biopolitics in Sitka, Alaska, focusing on infectious disease outbreaks over the past 200 years. Specifically, I interrogate the intersection of whiteness and infectious disease and suggest that the politicized concept of whiteness has shifted dramatically. I hypothesize that: 1) over the course of Russian and US rule, whiteness has served as a political matrix through which colonial powers consolidated biopolitical control of Native Alaskan Tlingit populations and that 2) during our current pandemic, whiteness serves as a matrix that threatens to undermine biopolitical cohesion and biosecurity of the Sitkan Tlingit and non-Native population. This research ? conducted with approval from Sitka Tribe of Alaska and Sealaska Heritage Institute ? seeks to understand how practices of biopolitical racialization have formed, changed, and retained their historical residues. This project contributes to medical anthropology and provides vital insight into attitudes toward public health measures during a pandemic. Such information is immediately useful to tribal governments and public health officials mitigating COVID-19?s impacts. It simultaneously analyzes the interplay between race, colonialism, and public health in the context of infectious disease outbreaks.