Sarah Agou, PhD candidate, Global Studies and Languages, and 2024–25 OHC Dissertation Fellow.

My dissertation conceptualizes forced enclosures as a violence imposed on Indigenous Quebec, Haiti, and Cuba. Spatial enclosure took the form of reservations, forced displacements, and migration controls; gender violence and enforced heteronormativity created gender enclosures, upon which debt systems, neocolonialism, and heavy extractivism superimposed an economical enclosure. Using a decolonial theoretical frame, I explore how storytelling from Indigenous Quebec, Haiti, and Cuba create a unique relationship to spaces, bodies, communities, languages, and the environment that break these multidimensional enclosures.