UW English Professor Publishes Book on Postcolonial Urban Planning

Julia Obert, an associate professor in the University of Wyoming Department of English, has released her second book, “The Making and Unmaking of Colonial Cities: Urban Planning, Imperial Power, and the Improvisational Itineraries of the Poor,” which was published by Oxford University Press.

Drawing on archival research and in-country fieldwork, her book examines histories of building and urban planning in four postcolonial capitals: Belfast, Northern Ireland; Windhoek, Namibia; Bridgetown, Barbados; and Hanoi, Vietnam.

“It argues that these histories amount, largely, to often brutal exercises of colonial power -- but it also notes the ways in which individual pedestrians have sometimes been able to contest that power by navigating space in subversive ways,” Obert says. “The book suggests that bodies can move against the authority of repressive regimes, at least to some degree, even when that authority is quite literally set in stone.”

Obert studies postcolonial literature and theory, Irish literature, poetry and poetics, 20th century British literature and critical theory. 

Her first book, “Postcolonial Overtures: The Politics of Sound in Contemporary Northern Irish Poetry,” was published by Syracuse University Press in 2015.

She now is working on two additional book projects: “Vulnerable Soundscapes: Archives of Climate Grief” and “Irish Joy: Resistant Affects in Contemporary Irish Literature.”

Her essays have appeared in a number of postcolonial studies, Irish studies and theory journals, and in various edited volumes. 

For more information, email Obert at jobert@uwyo.edu.