This course explores how performance has been deployed both as a tool of domination within colonial regimes and also as an insurgent tactic for decolonial resistance and refusal. The course traverses three units organized around three key technologies of imperialist violence that have simultaneously become conditions for anti-imperialist revolt over the past five hundred years of global history—Cages, Archives, and Cameras. Within each unit students will read crucial texts in Decolonial Theory, Black Studies, and Indigenous Studies from authors such as Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Anne McClintock, Patrick Wolfe, G. S. Coulthard, Saidiya Hartman, Orisanmi Burton, Ciarán Finlayson, and Harsha Walia; as well as experience a range of contemporary decolonial performance and artistic projects from artists such as the Coco Fusco, Guillermo Goméz-Peña, James Luna, Suneil Sanzgiri, Basel Abbas, Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Tourmaline, Amirtha Kidambi, Raven Chacon, Cecilia Vicuña, Trin T. Minh-ha, The Otolith Collective, and New Red Order. Over the course of the semester students will consider the role of performance in both maintaining and dismantling systems of colonial domination in locations stretching from San Juan, to Gaza, to Hanoi, to Port-au-Prince, to Srinagar, to Santiago, to Dakar, to New York City. Required assignments will include both critical and creative writing.