Help Support the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!

New Books Network
Pacific Studies
Australian and New Zealand Studies September 28, 2023

Blood and Dirt

Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand

Jared Davidson

Hosted by Ed Amon
Listen:
Picture, for a minute, every artwork of colonial New Zealand you can think of. Now add a chain gang. Hard-labour men guarded by other men with guns. Men moving heavy …

Pacific Studies

Subscribe:

Discussions with scholars of the Pacific region about their new books

Christian Studies September 9, 2023

Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific

The Transformation of Global Christianity

L. M. Ratnapalan

Hosted by Joseph Gaines
How does Robert Louis Stevenson’s engagement with Pacific Islands cultures demonstrate processes of inculturation and the transformation of global Christianity?  L. M. Ratnapalan's book Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The …
Australian and New Zealand Studies September 7, 2023

Making Mala

Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s

Clive Moore

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
Listen:
Malaita is one of the major islands in the Solomons Archipelago and has the largest population in the Solomon Islands nation. Its people have an undeserved reputation for conservatism and …
Indian Ocean World July 27, 2023

An Introduction to the Blue Humanities

Steve Mentz

Hosted by Ahmed Almaazmi
Listen:
An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (Routledge, 2023) is the first textbook to explore the many ways humans engage with water, utilizing literary, cultural, historical, and theoretical connections and ecologies …
East Asian Studies July 20, 2023

Truly Human

Indigeneity and Indigenous Resurgence on Formosa

Scott E. Simon

Hosted by Anthony Kao
Listen:
Similar to countries like the US and Canada, Taiwan also has indigenous peoples who've existed before the arrival of colonizers, and continue to grapple with the legacy of colonialism to this …
Military History June 17, 2023

War at the Margins

Indigenous Experiences in World War II

Lin Poyer

Hosted by Holger Droessler
Listen:
Eighty years on, Lin Poyer's book War at the Margins: Indigenous Experiences in World War II (U Hawaii Press, 2022) offers a global and comparative view of the impact of …
American West June 14, 2023

Menace to Empire

Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the US Security State

Moon-Ho Jung

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Listen:
As the American imperial project in the Pacific World grew at the end of the nineteenth century, so too did the American security and intelligence state, argues Dr. Moon-Ho Jung …
Environmental Studies May 23, 2023

Sea Change

An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean

Christina Gerhardt

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
Atlases are being redrawn as islands are disappearing. What does an island see when the sea rises? Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean (U California Press …
American West April 28, 2023

Pacific Confluence

Fighting Over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i

Christen T. Sasaki

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
What if Hawai'i wasn't the 50th state? In Pacific Confluence: Fighting Over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i (U California Press, 2022), UCSD assistant professor Christen Sasaki argues that the years 1893-1898 marked a …
Australian and New Zealand Studies April 8, 2023

Privilege in Perpetuity

Exploding a Pākehā Myth

Peter Meihana

Hosted by Ed Amon
'The idea of Māori privilege continues to be deployed in order to constrain Māori aspirations and maintain the power imbalance that colonisation achieved in the nineteenth century.' The ‘idea of …
Taiwan on Air March 9, 2023

Book Chat: Oceanic Writing

A Discussion with Liao Hung-chi

Liao Hung-chi

Hosted by Taiwan on Air
In this episode, our host, Ti-han Chang, conducted an interview chat with the ecowriter, Liao Hung-chi about his oceanic and cetacean writings. The interview covers the writer's view on the …
SSEAC Stories January 26, 2023

Shaping Civilisations

The Sea in Asian History

Eric Tagliocozzo

Hosted by Natali Pearson
The ocean is more connective device than barrier, bringing together diverse topics, time-periods and geographies. It has linked and connected the various littorals of Asia into a segmented, yet at …
American West January 3, 2023

Imperial Zions

Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the Pacific

Amanda Hendrix-Komoto

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has always been globally situated, argues Montana State history professor Amanda Hendrix-Komoto in Imperial Zions: Religion, Race, and Family in the American West and the …
African American Studies December 20, 2022

Pasifika Black

Oceania, Anti-colonialism, and the African World

Quito Swan

Hosted by Amanda Joyce Hall
Oceania is a vast sea of islands, large scale political struggles and immensely significant historical phenomena. Pasifika Black: Oceania, Anti-Colonialism, and the African World (NYU Press, 2022) is a compelling …
Human Rights December 16, 2022

Chasing Wrongs and Rights

My Experience Defending Human Rights Around the World

Elaine Pearson

Hosted by Nicholas Bequelin
Chasing Wrongs and Rights: My Experience Defending Human Rights Around the World (Simon & Schuster, 2022) by Elaine Pearson, the Asia Director at Human Rights Watch, is an intimate account …
Religion December 10, 2022

Fire on the Island

Fear, Hope and a Christian Revival in Vanuatu

Tom Bratrud

Hosted by Tiatemsu Longkumer
In 2014, the island of Ahamb in Vanuatu became the scene of a startling Christian revival movement led by thirty children with ‘spiritual vision.’ However, it ended dramatically when two …
Law November 25, 2022

Foreign Judges in the Pacific

Anna Dziedzic

Hosted by Jane Richards
While it might ordinarily be assumed that judges who sit on constitutional courts will be local citizens, in the islands of the Pacific, more than three-quarters of judges are foreign. This is …
Language November 15, 2022

Speak Not

Empire, Identity and the Politics of Language

James Griffiths

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
As globalisation continues languages are disappearing faster than ever, leaving our planet's linguistic diversity leaping towards extinction. The science of how languages are acquired is becoming more advanced and the …
Medicine September 21, 2022

Tik Merauke

An Epidemic Like No Other

John Richens

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
A medical doctor with an inquisitive mind and a traveling spirit, John Richens thought he had hit upon an exemplary public health case study – the story of donovanosis among …
General History August 5, 2022

Australia in the Age of International Development, 1945–1975

Colonial and Foreign Aid Policy in Papua New Guinea and Southeast Asia

Nicholas Ferns

Hosted by Bernard Keo
In the voluminous literature on the history of modernisation theory and its associated concept of development since the end of World War II, much of the focus lies on the …