Maximilian C. Forte

Research Interests

Past:
In previous years Maximilian C. Forte conducted research focused on indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and their current cultural and political resurgence, with interests in the cultural politics of indigeneity, nationalism, indigenous self-representations, ritual and tradition, and the transnational organization of indigenous peoples in the Caribbean and across the Americas. He published in Cultural Survival Quarterly, Indigenous Affairs, and in annual volumes of the IWGIA’s  Indigenous World. Max also authored Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs: (Post) Colonial Representations of Aboriginality in Trinidad and Tobago (University Press of Florida, 2005), and edited Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean (Peter Lang, 2006) and Indigenous Cosmopolitans: Transnational and Transcultural Indigeneity in the Twenty-First Century (Peter Lang, 2010). For a decade, Max was the founding and managing editor of the now discontinued open access journal, Kacike: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History and Anthropology.

Present:

Max Forte’s research and teaching interests have now taken different though not entirely unrelated paths. Political anthropology remains the cornerstone of Max’s work. His focal concerns are imperialism, ideologies of empire, colonialism, the politics of foreign intervention, and decolonization. Max is likewise interested in a range of theories and practices of resistance across the spectrum of national, ethnic, indigenous, and other activist struggles. In line with these interests he is concerned with critical analysis of the national security state and the militarization of the academy and anthropology in particular; the imperialist history of anthropology; anthropology against empire and anthropology after empire (or a decolonized anthropology). Currently Max writes and speaks most often about anthropology in counterinsurgency; “digital activism” and “soft power”; and, the seeding of mass and social media by military and intelligence agencies. His work is no longer tied to any one geographic part of the world, nor any one method for studying these issues, and his work deliberately fuses analysis conducted across a variety of disciplines. His current teaching focus reflects this reorientation in his academic practice—especially with reference to his seminar, The New Imperialism, from which annual volumes of student work are published. Max is also a founding member of Anthropologists for Justice and Peace, which directs its energies at many of these same issues, as they impact Canadian anthropology. You can find Max writing most often for a public audience at Al Jazeera (Arabic)¸ Zero Anthropology (on an almost daily basis), and occasionally in CounterPunch.

Courses

Max is in the process of preparing two new courses that stem from his keystone courses (Political Anthropology, and The New Imperialism): Public Anthropology and Anthropology and Empire. In the future he may offer a course directly focused on the militarization of anthropology.

600 level:
Decolonizing Anthropology

400 level:
Political Anthropology

The New Imperialism

Political Activism and the Web

300 level:
Indigenous Resurgence

Media Ethnographies

Visual Anthropology