Pacific Studies

Pacific Studies

episodes

Discussions with scholars of the Pacific region about their new books

Nell Freudenberger, "The Limits" (Knopf, 2024)

April 2, 2024

The Limits

Nell Freudenberger
Hosted by Chris Holmes

The most thrilling work yet from the best-selling, prize-winning author of The Newlyweds and Lost and Wanted, a stunning new novel set in French Polyn…

Emily Conroy-Krutz, "Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations" (Cornell UP, 2024)

March 24, 2024

Missionary Diplomacy

Emily Conroy-Krutz
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations (Cornell University Press, 2024) illuminates the crucial place of rel…

Angela Wanhalla, "Of Love and War: Pacific Brides of World War II" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

February 25, 2024

Of Love and War

Angela Wanhalla
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

Between 1942 and 1945 more than two million servicemen occupied the southern Pacific theater, the majority of whom were Americans in service with the …

Daniel Immerwahr, "How to Hide an Empire: The History of the Greater United States" (FSG, 2019)

February 11, 2024

How to Hide an Empire

Daniel Immerwahr
Hosted by Zeb Larson

“Is America an Empire?” is a popular question for pundits and historians, likely because it sets off such a provocative debate. All too often, however…

Kiribati in the Chinese Pacific: A Discussion with Rodolfo Maggio

February 2, 2024

Kiribati in the Chinese Pacific

Rodolfo Maggio

Is Kiribati in the American lake, Indo-Pacific or Chinese Pacific? In this Episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks to Rodolfo Maggio, a senior researcher at …

Leanne Trapedo Sims, "Reckoning with Restorative Justice: Hawai'i Women's Prison Writing" (Duke UP, 2023)

January 19, 2024

Reckoning with Restorative Justice

Leanne Trapedo Sims
Hosted by Rameen Mohammed

In Reckoning with Restorative Justice Hawaii Women's Prison Writing (Duke University Press, 2023), Dr. Leanne Trapedo Sims explores the experiences of…

Brandon Presser, "The Far Land: 200 Years of Murder, Mania and Mutiny in the South Pacific" (Icon Books, 2022)

January 10, 2024

The Far Land

Brandon Presser
Hosted by Miranda Melcher

In 1808, an American merchant ship happened upon an uncharted island in the South Pacific and unwittingly solved the biggest nautical mystery of the e…

Jeremy Yellen, "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War" (Cornell UP, 2019)

December 26, 2023

The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Jeremy Yellen
Hosted by Nathan Hopson

Jeremy Yellen’s The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (Cornell University Press, 2019) is a challenging transnat…

Jeremy Black, "A Brief History of the Pacific: The Great Ocean" (Robinson, 2023)

October 2, 2023

A Brief History of the Pacific

Jeremy Black
Hosted by Charles Coutinho
Listen:

Jeremy Black's A Brief History of the Pacific: The Great Ocean (Robinson, 2023) succeeds in examining both the indigenous presence on ocean's islands …

Jared Davidson, "Blood and Dirt: Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand" (Bridget Williams Books, 2023)

September 28, 2023

Blood and Dirt

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. M…

L. M. Ratnapalan, "Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific: The Transformation of Global Christianity" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

September 9, 2023

Robert Louis Stevenson and the Pacific

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 C…

Clive Moore, "Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s" (Australia National UP, 2017)

September 7, 2023

Making Mala

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 undes…

Steve Mentz, "An Introduction to the Blue Humanities" (Routledge, 2023)

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, …

Scott E. Simon, "Truly Human: Indigeneity and Indigenous Resurgence on Formosa" (U Toronto Press, 2023)

July 20, 2023

Truly Human

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 grapp…

Lin Poyer, "War at the Margins: Indigenous Experiences in World War II" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)

June 17, 2023

War at the Margins

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 vi…

Moon-Ho Jung, "Menace to Empire: Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the US Security State" (U California Press, 2022)

June 14, 2023

Menace to Empire

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 sta…

Christina Gerhardt, "Sea Change: An Atlas of Islands in a Rising Ocean" (U California Press, 2023)

May 23, 2023

Sea Change

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 (…

Christen T. Sasaki, "Pacific Confluence: Fighting Over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai'i" (U California Press, 2022)

April 28, 2023

Pacific Confluence

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 …

Peter Meihana, "Privilege in Perpetuity: Exploding a Pākehā Myth" (Bridget Williams Books, 2022)

April 8, 2023

Privilege in Perpetuity

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 achie…

Book Chat: Oceanic Writing

March 9, 2023

Book Chat: Oceanic Writing

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 in…