Jeffrey Ostler

Astronomers conducting searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) have long been interested in the history of “first contact” between foreign civilizations as a proxy for extraterrestrial contact and have often employed frontier metaphors and colonial analogies in their pursuit of extraterrestrials.

is the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History at the University of Oregon. He is the author of(University Press of Kansas, 1993);(Cambridge University Press, 2004);(Viking, 2010); and(Yale University Press, 2019).

ARTICLES An Introduction to Settler Science and the Ethics of Contact Indigenous Studies Working Group Statement On the Frontier of Redefining “Intelligent Life” in Settler Science From Interstellar Imperialism to Celestial Wayfinding: Prime Directives and Colonial Time-Knots in SETI Imaginative Cosmos: The Impact of Colonial Heritage in Radio Astronomy and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence On Being Late: Cruising Mauna Kea and Unsettling Technoscientific Conquest in Hawai‘i G-Men,...