2026-27 W. J. Alexander Lecture in English Literature
Joseph Brant's Unwritten History: Towards an Indigenous Antiquarianism
Presented by Dr. Robbie Richardson
Hybrid Lecture
Thursday, October 15, 4:30-6:00 p.m. ET
In person and online (followed by a reception)
Paul Cadario Conference Centre at Croft Chapter House
University College, 15 King’s College Circle, Toronto, ON M5S 3H7
*This event is free, and all are welcome, though registration is required and seating is limited for in-person attendance.
Presented by
Dr. Robbie Richardson
Indigenous and Eighteenth-Century Literature
School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow
This lecture will compare Indigenous conceptions of history from the eighteenth-century Eastern Woodlands with the European Enlightenment’s “conquest of the historical world” and the rise of historiography. David Hume famously described the period as “the historical age” due to the wide readership for historical writing and corresponding production of books, and this talk will argue that Indigenous peoples resisted their representation in such writings as people without history or disappearing primitive subjects in what Mark Rifkin calls “settler time.” Looking at transatlantic figures such as Mohawk leader Thayendanegea or Joseph Brant and Mohegan preacher and activist Samson Occom, it will show the ways that Indigenous peoples refused narrative or conjectural histories to maintain aesthetic, rhetorical, and temporal sovereignty, particularly through cultural objects. The lecture will find kinship between British antiquarian scholarship of the period and Indigenous epistemologies through their shared elevation of objects over written sources and ultimately call for an Indigenous antiquarianism to reclaim historical agency and rhetorical sovereignty through the ancestral belongings still held by museums and universities around the world.
Register for Virtual Attendance
To attend this lecture virtually, please click the link below. Please submit a registration for each person who plans to attend. You must register to access the webinar link.
Register for In-person Attendance
To attend this lecture in person, please click the link below. Please submit a registration for each person who plans to attend. Once all in-person seats are taken, a waitlist registration option will open.
About the Speaker
Robbie Richardson is Mi’gmaw and a citizen of Pabineau First Nation (Oinpegitjoig) in New Brunswick, Canada. He currently teaches Indigenous and eighteenth-century British literature at the University of Glasgow, and previously taught at Princeton University and before that at the University of Kent.
His first book The Savage and Modern Self: North American Indians in Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2018) investigates British representations of First Nations people across a wide array of literature, visual art, and material culture from 1660 to 1800, and examines the ways in which the figure of the “Indian” was used to negotiate and shape emerging discourses of modernity throughout the eighteenth century.
His next book project explores the making and history of Indigenous objects, their circulation prior to the nineteenth century and the transmission of meaning between Indigenous and European cultures, and the new forms of transcultural knowledge these objects embodied and produced. This work is positioned between Indigenous studies, eighteenth-century literary studies, and art history.
Robbie has held fellowships at Yale University and Carleton University, and currently holds a Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers at Freie Universität Berlin. His work has appeared in publications such as PMLA, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, and ELH.
The Alexander Lectures were founded in 1928 in memory of Professor W. J. Alexander, Head of the Department of English at University College from 1889 to 1926.
Promotional image credit: National Gallery of Canada.