This is the first of two volumes of essays from the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network's 14th International Conference focused on decolonizing churches and theology, addressing oppressions based on gender, racial, and ethnic identities; economic inequality; social vulnerabilities; climate change and global challenges such as pandemics, neoliberalism, and the role of information technology in modern society, all connected with the topic of decolonization. The essays in this volume focus on decoloniality in religious and theological dialogue, migration, history, and education, written from historical, dogmatic, social scientific, and liturgical perspectives.

This is the second of two volumes of essays from the Ecclesiological Investigations International Research Network's 14th International Conference focused on decolonizing churches and theology, addressing oppressions based on gender, racial, and ethnic identities; economic inequality; social vulnerabilities; climate change and global challenges such as pandemics, neoliberalism, and the role of information technology in modern society, all connected with the topic of decolonization. The essays in this volume focus on decoloniality in empire, family, and mission, written from historical, dogmatic, social scientific, and liturgical perspectives.

Land Uprising reframes Indigenous land reclamation as a horizon to decolonize the settler colonial conditions of literary, intellectual, and activist labor. Simón Ventura Trujillo argues that land provides grounding for rethinking the connection between Native storytelling practices and Latinx racialization across overlapping colonial and nation-state forms. Trujillo situates his inquiry in the cultural production of La Alianza Federal de Mercedes, a formative yet understudied organization of the Chicanx movement of the 1960s and 1970s. La Alianza sought to recover Mexican and Spanish land grants in New Mexico that had been dispossessed after the Mexican-American War. During graduate school, Trujillo realized that his grandparents were activists in La Alianza. Written in response to this discovery, Land Uprising bridges La Alianza’s insurgency and New Mexican land grant struggles to the writings of Leslie Marmon Silko, Ana Castillo, Simon Ortiz, and the Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. In doing so, the book reveals uncanny connections between Chicanx, Latinx, Latin American, and Native American and Indigenous studies to grapple with Native land reclamation as the future horizon for Chicanx and Latinx indigeneities.

This book is a radical piece of counter-intuitive rethinking of the clash of civilizations theory and global politics. In this richly detailed criticism of contemporary politics, Hamid Dabashi argues that after 9/11 we have not seen a new phase in a long running confrontation between Islam and the West, but that such categories have in fact collapsed and exhausted themselves. The West is no longer a unified actor and Islam is ideologically depleted in its confrontation with colonialism. Rather we are seeing the emergence of the US as a lone superpower, and a confrontation between a form of imperial globalized capital and the rising need for a new Islamic theodicy. The combination of political salience and theoretical force makes Islamic Liberation Theology a cornerstone of a whole new generation of thinking about political Islamism and a compelling read for anyone interested in contemporary Islam, current affairs and US foreign policy. Dabashi drives his well-supported and thoroughly documented points steadily forward in an earnest and highly readable style.

In December 2018, Belgium's Royal Museum for Central Africa reopened to the public, five years after closing for an extensive renovation. Rebranded the AfricaMuseum, the institution was eager to shed its colonial image and highlight its new "focus on decolonization." To do so, the museum emphasized the display of newly commissioned or acquired artworks by contemporary artists from the former Belgian colonies of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi. In this dissertation, I ask what work the contemporary art on view in the renovated museum is being asked to do, a question which guided my analysis of artworks and interviews with artists. Rather than "decolonizing" the museum, the artists have produced installations that expose violent histories of colonization previously ignored by the museum, raise questions about ongoing relationships between Belgium and Central Africa, and challenge the museum's role in representing African stories. This dissertation begins with consideration of two site-specific installations commissioned by the museum, "Ombres" (Shadows) by Freddy Tsimba and the multi-part "RE/STORE" project by Aimé Mpane and Jean-Pierre Müller. Both installations comment on the colonial memories embedded in the museum's very architecture, and counter the museum's earlier celebration of colonial conquest by bringing attention to Congolese experiences of colonial violence. The "RE/STORE" project in particular, which began as one sculpture by Mpane but has developed over two years into two sculptures and sixteen veils designed by Mpane and Jean-Pierre Müller, illustrates the gradual nature of the museum's moves toward "decolonizing." Mpane characterizes this as an unending process advancing "petit à petit," or "little by little." In addition to the commissions, the museum acquired numerous works of art by contemporary artists. I discuss three such works, by Aimé Ntakiyica, Michèle Magema, and Freddy Tsimba, all of which present personal stories with collective implications. These personal artworks create human connections between visitors and artists whose ancestors were dehumanized in earlier exhibitions within the museum. As the AfricaMuseum moves toward decolonizing, contemporary artworks provide opportunities for critique and connection, building on memories to imagine possible futures.

The Dutch Atlantic investigates the Dutch involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and assesses the historical consequences of this for contemporary European society. Kwame Nimako and Glenn Willemsen show how the slave trade and slavery intertwined economic, social and cultural elements, including nation-state formation in the Netherlands and across Europe. They explore the mobilization of European populations in the implementation of policies that facilitated the slave trade and examine how European countries created and expanded laws that perpetuated colonization. Addressing key themes such as the incorporation of former slaves into post-slavery states and contemporary collective efforts to forget and/or remember slavery and its legacy in the Netherlands, this is an essential text for students of European history and postcolonial studies.