New Books in Pacific Studies
Episodes
Linda Goddard, "Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin" (Yale UP, 2019)
31 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin (Yale University Press, 2019), Linda Goddard investigates the role that Paul Gauguin’s writings played...
JoAnna Poblete, "Balancing the Tides: Marine Practices in American Samoa" (U Hawai’i Press, 2020)
28 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In Balancing the Tides: Marine Practices in American Samoa (University of Hawai’i Press, 2020), JoAnna Poblete demonstrates how western-style econom...
Matt Tomlinson, "God is Samoan: Dialogues Between Culture and Theology in the Pacific" (U Hawai‘i Press, 2020)
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Christian theologians in the Pacific Islands see culture as the grounds on which one understands God. In God is Samoan: Dialogues Between Culture and...
Chelsea McCracken, "A Grammar of Belep" (Walter de Gruyter, 2019)
09 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Chelsea McCracken talks about her new book A Grammar of Belep (Walter de Gruyter, 2019). McCracken is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts & ...
Kirsten L. Ziomek, "Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan’s Colonial Peoples" (Harvard Asia Center. 2019)
16 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Using diverse sources well beyond the colonial archive such as photographs, postcards, and even headstones, Dr. Kirsten L. Ziomek reveals the stories ...
Elise Berman, "Talking Like Children: Language and the Production of Age in the Marshall Islands" (Oxford UP, 2019)
02 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Since World War II, the fate of the Marshal Islands has been tied to the United States. The Marshalls were a site of military testing, host a US milit...
Don Kulick, "A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea" (Algonquin Books, 2019)
07 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Called "perhaps the finest and most profound account of ethnographic fieldwork and discovery that has ever entered the anthropological literature" by ...
Rob Ruck, "Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Journey of Samoans to the NFL" (The New Press, 2018)
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Rob Ruck, Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, and the author of Tropic of Football: The Long and Perilous Jou...
Dean Itsuji Saranillio, "Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai‘i Statehood" (Duke UP, 2018)
19 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Unsustainable Empire: Alternative Histories of Hawai‘i Statehood (Duke University Press, 2018), Dean Itsuji Saranillio offers a bold challenge to...
Christina Thompson, "Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia" (Harper, 2019)
25 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It's rare for a book of non-fiction to catch the interest of the reading public in the United States, much less a book on the history of science in th...
Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of my talking points when hanging out with my fellow diplomatic historians is the painful absence of scholarship on Hawaii. Too many political his...
Jessica Hardin, "Faith and the Pursuit of Health: Cardiometabolic Disorders in Samoa" (Rutgers UP, 2018)
14 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jessica Hardin's new book Faith and the Pursuit of Health: Cardiometabolic Disorders in Samoa (Rutgers University Press, 2018) explores how Pentecosta...
Daniel Immerwahr, "How to Hide an Empire: The History of the Greater United States" (FSG, 2019)
07 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“Is America an Empire?” is a popular question for pundits and historians, likely because it sets off such a provocative debate. All too often, how...
Noenoe K. Silva, "Steel-Tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History" (Duke UP, 2017)
10 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The process of colonialism seeks to demean Indigenous intellect and destroy Indigenous literary traditions. Reconstructing those legacies is thus an a...
Seth Archer, “Sharks Upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawai’i, 1778-1855” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
04 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Sharks Upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawai’i, 1778-1855 (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Utah State Universi...
Christopher B. Patterson, “Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific” (Rutgers UP, 2018)
26 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Christopher B. Patterson‘s book Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific (Rutgers University Press, 2018) reads English-langua...
John Ryan Fischer, “Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawai’i” (UNC Press, 2015)
13 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
John Ryan Fischer‘s book Cattle Colonialism: An Environmental History of the Conquest of California and Hawai’i (University of North Carolina Pres...
Marie Alohalani Brown, “Facing the Spears of Change: The Life and Legacy of John Papa Ii” (U. Hawaii Press, 2016)
27 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s not often that a single person’s life can reveal the dramatic social and political shifts of a community. From his youth, John Papa I’i, an...
Stephen Dupont, “Piksa Niugini” (Peabody Press/Radius Books, 2013)
18 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Piksa Niugini by Stephen Dupont, with forward by Robert Gardner and essay by Bob Connolly, is published by the Peabody Press and Radius Books, (2013)....
Nicole Starosielski, “The Undersea Network” (Duke UP, 2015)
25 Aug 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Nicole Starosielski‘s new book brings an environmental and ecological consciousness to the study of digital media and digital systems, and it is a m...
Matt Tomlinson, “Ritual Textuality: Pattern and Motion in Performance” (Oxford UP, 2014)
06 Jan 2015
Contributed by Lukas
Religious ritual has been a staple of anthropological study. In his latest monograph, Ritual Textuality: Pattern and Motion in Performance (Oxford Uni...
Vernadette V. Gonzalez, “Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines” (Duke UP, 2013)
22 Sep 2014
Contributed by Lukas
Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez‘s Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines (Duke University Press, 2013), examines the ...
Daniel Sherman, "French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945-1975" (U Chicago Press, 2011)
05 Dec 2013
Contributed by Lukas
The "primitivist idea" has played an important role in art and culture from at least the late nineteenth century. From Paul Gauguin to Pablo Picasso, ...
Noelani Goodyear-Kapua, “The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
08 Jul 2013
Contributed by Lukas
“School was a place that devalued who we are as Indigenous people,” says Noelani Goodyear-Kapua. These were institutions — at least since white ...
Paul Watson, “Up Pohnpei: A Quest to Reclaim the Soul of Football by Leading the World’s Ultimate Underdogs to Glory” (Profile Books, 2012)
29 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Coming to terms with the limitations of our own sporting achievement is one of the hardest things many of us have to do in life. A couple of years ago...