New Oceania

New Oceania
Author: Matthew Hayward
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2019-09-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000576612

For so long figured in European discourses as the antithesis of modernity, the Pacific Islands have remained all but absent from the modernist studies’ critical map. Yet, as the chapters of New Oceania: Modernisms and Modernities in the Pacific collectively show, Pacific artists and writers have been as creatively engaged in the construction and representation of modernity as any of their global counterparts. In the second half of the twentieth century, driving a still ongoing process of decolonisation, Pacific Islanders forged an extraordinary cultural and artistic movement. Integrating Indigenous aesthetics, forms, and techniques with a range of other influences — realist novels, avant-garde poetry, anti-colonial discourse, biblical verse, Indian mythology, American television, Bollywood film — Pacific artists developed new creative registers to express the complexity of the region’s transnational modernities. New Oceania presents the first sustained account of the modernist dimensions of this period, while presenting timely reflections on the ideological and methodological limitations of the global modernism rubric. Breaking new critical ground, it brings together scholars from a range of backgrounds to demonstrate the relevance of modernism for Pacific scholars, and the relevance of Pacific literature for modernist scholars.

The New Oceania

The New Oceania
Author: Edward F. Mazur
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2005
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1412064783

This is a true account of a heavily suppressed story of intrigue that begins with an inquiry into a strange and isolated shooting fatality in Texas in 1982. It leads progressively through Texas agencies to the FBI and eventually to highly placed officials in Texas, Arkansas and Washington D.C. A former resident of Mena, Arkansas is allegedly shot to death in Texas in August 1982. Without conducting an investigation local authorities quickly rule the fatality an accident and impose a news blackout on the shooting. The father of the victim uncovers serious discrepancies and learns that local Texas FBI agents were associated with the incident as were federal agents in a federal grand jury investigation in Philadelphia. Appeals to the Texas State Attorney General for an inquiry to resolve the many discrepancies and contradictions in the case fail. Members of Congress contact the Texas Governor to request an official inquiry. The Governor grants their request but quickly terminates it without notifying them of his action. Arkansas Senator David Pryor and U.S. Representative John Hammerschmidt then take the matter up with the Director of the FBI, the Director of BATF and the Department of Justice in Washington only to encounter persistent evasions. The Texas fatality is later linked to government- sanctioned drug and arms smuggling activities in Mena, Arkansas that were being investigated by Arkansas State Trooper Russell Welch, IRS investigator Bill Duncan and private investigator Gene Wheaton. The author's dogged investigation into the suppressed death of his son presents a well documented, fully corroborated account of the misuse of official power. That pernicious danger threatens the very fabric of American society and American constitutional freedoms. This intriguing tale of transgressions in high places is not just an engrossing story. It is a wake-up call.

Belonging in Oceania

Belonging in Oceania
Author: Elfriede Hermann
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1782384162

Ethnographic case studies explore what it means to “belong” in Oceania, as contributors consider ongoing formations of place, self and community in connection with travelling, internal and international migration. The chapters apply the multi-dimensional concepts of movement, place-making and cultural identifications to explain contemporary life in Oceanic societies. The volume closes by suggesting that constructions of multiple belongings—and, with these, the relevant forms of mobility, place-making and identifications—are being recontextualized and modified by emerging discourses of climate change and sea-level rise.

Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia

Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia
Author: Evelyn Flores
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0824877381

For the first time, poetry, short stories, critical and creative essays, chants, and excerpts of plays by Indigenous Micronesian authors have been brought together to form a resounding—and distinctly Micronesian—voice. With over two thousand islands spread across almost three million square miles of the Pacific Ocean, Micronesia and its peoples have too often been rendered invisible and insignificant both in and out of academia. This long-awaited anthology of contemporary indigenous literature will reshape Micronesia’s historical and literary landscape. Presenting over seventy authors and one hundred pieces, Indigenous Literatures from Micronesia features nine of the thirteen basic language groups, including Palauan, Chamorro, Chuukese, I-Kiribati, Kosraean, Marshallese, Nauruan, Pohnpeian, and Yapese. The volume editors, from Micronesia themselves, have selected representative works from throughout the region—from Palau in the west, to Kiribati in the east, to the global diaspora. They have reached back for historically groundbreaking work and scouted the present for some of the most cited and provocative of published pieces and for the most promising new authors. Richly diverse, the stories of Micronesia’s resilient peoples are as vast as the sea and as deep as the Mariana Trench. Challenging centuries-old reductive representations, writers passionately explore seven complex themes: “Origins” explores creation, foundational, and ancestral stories; “Resistance” responds to colonialism and militarism; “Remembering” captures diverse memories and experiences; “Identities” articulates the nuances of culture; “Voyages” maps migration and diaspora; “Family” delves into interpersonal and community relationships; and “New Micronesia” gathers experimental, liminal, and cutting-edge voices. This anthology reflects a worldview unique to the islands of Micronesia, yet it also connects to broader issues facing Pacific Islanders and indigenous peoples throughout the world. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Pacific, indigenous, diasporic, postcolonial, and environmental studies and literatures.

The Happy Isles of Oceania

The Happy Isles of Oceania
Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 731
Release: 2006-12-08
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0547525184

The author of The Great Railway Bazaar explores the South Pacific by kayak: “This exhilarating epic ranks with [his] best travel books” (Publishers Weekly). In one of his most exotic and adventuresome journeys, travel writer Paul Theroux embarks on an eighteen-month tour of the South Pacific, exploring fifty-one islands by collapsible kayak. Beginning in New Zealand's rain forests and ultimately coming to shore thousands of miles away in Hawaii, Theroux paddles alone over isolated atolls, through dirty harbors and shark-filled waters, and along treacherous coastlines. Along the way, Theroux meets the king of Tonga, encounters street gangs in Auckland, and investigates a cargo cult in Vanuatu. From Australia to Tahiti, Fiji, Easter Island, and beyond, this exhilarating tropical epic is full of disarming observations and high adventure.

Christian Politics in Oceania

Christian Politics in Oceania
Author: Matt Tomlinson
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2013
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0857457462

The phrase "Christian politics" evokes two meanings: political relations between denominations in one direction, and the contributions of Christian churches to debates about the governing of society. The contributors to this volume address Christian politics in both senses and argue that Christianity is always and inevitably political in the Pacific Islands. Drawing on ethnographic and historical research in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji, the authors argue that Christianity and politics have redefined each other in much of Oceania in ways that make the two categories inseparable at any level of analysis. The individual chapters vividly illuminate the ways in which Christian politics operate across a wide scale, from interpersonal relations to national and global interconnections.

Pasifika Black

Pasifika Black
Author: Quito Swan
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2024-12-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1479835269

ASALH 2023 Book Prize Winner A lively living history of anti-colonialist movements across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans Oceania is a vast sea of islands, large scale political struggles and immensely significant historical phenomena. Pasifika Black is a compelling history of understudied anti-colonial movements in this region, exploring how indigenous Oceanic activists intentionally forged international connections with the African world in their fights for liberation. Drawing from research conducted across Fiji, Australia, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Britain, and the United States, Quito Swan shows how liberation struggles in Oceania actively engaged Black internationalism in their diverse battles against colonial rule. Pasifika Black features as its protagonists Oceania's many playwrights, organizers, religious leaders, scholars, Black Power advocates, musicians, environmental justice activists, feminists, and revolutionaries who carried the banners of Black liberation across the globe. It puts artists like Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal and her 1976 call for a Black Pacific into an extended conversation with Nigeria’s Wole Soyinka, the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific’s Amelia Rokotuivuna, Samoa’s Albert Wendt, African American anthropologist Angela Gilliam, the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins, West Papua’s Ben Tanggahma, New Caledonia’s Déwé Gorodey, and Polynesian Panther Will ‘Ilolahia. In so doing, Swan displays the links Oceanic activists consciously and painstakingly formed in order to connect Black metropoles across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. In a world grappling with the global significance of Black Lives Matter and state-sanctioned violence against Black and Brown bodies, Pasifika Black is a both triumphant history and tragic reminder of the ongoing quests for decolonization in Oceania, the African world, and the Global South.

Australia and Oceania

Australia and Oceania
Author: Mel Friedman
Publisher: Children's Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009-03
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780531218280

Discover the history, people, animals, food, culture and future of Australia, the smallest of the seven continents, and the islands known as Oceania.