“You made the White Walkers!”: Game of Thrones, the Children of the Forest, and Settler Colonialism

Abstract
This presentation will look at the adaptation and expansion of the Children of the Forest from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire Series into HBO's television series, Game of Thrones.  Ultimately, I argue that the expanded representation of the Children within the adaption, including the decision to make the White Walkers a failed attempt to defeat the human settlers by the Children and the deaths of the last remaining Children, reinforce settler colonial ideology and themes of American imperialism.
Presenter Biography

Dr. Rachel M. Hartnett is a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned her PhD in English from the University of Florida. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, U.S. empire, and popular culture. She has been published in the Journal of Popular Culture and has a chapter forthcoming in The Palgrave Handbook of Monsters and Monstrous Bodies. She is currently working on a monograph, titled Postcolonialism in A Song of Ice and Fire, which will be an analysis of race and imperialism in George R.R. Martin’s fantasy book series.