Publications

American Indian Studies' Featured Publication is Reading Natalie Koch's, Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia by Andrew Curley.

Deserts are almost always defined by outsiders. To the desert dweller, the desert isn't a barren wasteland, it's home. It's the intruder that defines the desert as a desert. To this degree, the desert is imagined as a site of profound transformation, as a place that can be remade and defined for some greater purpose, a purpose understood through ideology, some unattainable utopia around which society organizes itself to accomplish. Natalie Koch’s book, Arid Empire (2022), highlights some of the colonial and imperial uses of the idea of deserts. She shows how they are places for militarization, land grabs, agricultural extension work, and diplomacy.