Abstract

This project views (re)turns to land, each other, and self as ways to imagine and create better futures. The introduction contextualizes this project within interdisciplinary decolonial work, primarily that of diasporic, Indigenous, Chicanx, and Black feminist writing, focusing on decolonial women of color feminist thought. Chapter one affirms the importance of living and feeling a relational reality, which we can achieve through practices of relationality such as Bawaka Country et al. and Lauren Tynan’s Caring as Country. Chapter two demands that we create new models of loving across difference and being in the world together through what I call internormativity and the accompanying practice of internormative love, accessed through María Lugones’ faithful witnessing and ‘world’-travelling. Chapter three recognizes that our futures rely on our ability to feel, which can be learned and practiced through Audre Lorde’s concept of the erotic. Finally, I intersperse letters, poems, songs, and other hybrid creative forms to demonstrate that the personal, political, imaginative, theoretical, and practical are necessarily intertwined. This project takes seriously how we move toward the multiplicitous material demands of decolonization and decoloniality (the political and economic demands, as well as the emotional, corporeal, sexual, spiritual, etc. demands), understanding these processes as mutually informing and dependent. This project moves us toward better futures predicated on a (re)turn to us—land, each other, and self—as interconnected, interdependent, and relational, always emerging and becoming together.

Advisor

García, Daimys

Second Advisor

Garonzik, Rebecca

Department

Spanish; English; Interdepartmental

Disciplines

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies

Keywords

(re)turns, future, futurity, future work, decolonization, decoloniality, diasporic, relationality, land, Caring as Country, internormativity, internormative love, decolonial love, faithful witnessing, 'world'-travelling, the erotic

Publication Date

2026

Degree Granted

Bachelor of Arts

Document Type

Senior Independent Study Thesis

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© Copyright 2026 Emma E. Zhanat Anderson