Key Debates in Island Studies
Reading Group
The monthly zoom reading group is lead by Kasia Mika and Jonathan Pugh. If you would like to take part, have any questions, or further suggestions of texts we might read, please email Jonathan.Pugh@ncl.ac.uk and k.mika@qmul.ac.uk
Building upon the last few years of the Anthropocene Islands reading group, each month we will take a single, important topic for contemporary island-related studies and assign a published paper on this topic beforehand to stimulate thinking and discussion. The explicit purpose of the group is to provide a space to slow down and draw out in more precise ways the analytical and conceptual frameworks which are today being adopted in critical debates in island studies; dissecting in detail framings of, for examples, decolonising the university, positionally and ethnography, relational ontologies, the more-than-human, extractivism, opacity, understandings of blackness, contemporary poetics and island literatures, as these are being developed in today’s islands-related research.
To accommodate different time zones, the island studies reading group will meet on zoom twice per month.
November meetings 2023: Tues 28th Nov (9.30-10.30am London Time) and Thursday 30th Nov (5pm-6pm London Time):-
Reading: Gfoellner, B. (2023). “We Are Still Here Holding Fast”: Stillness in the Wake of Hurricane Irma in Richard Georges’ Epiphaneia. Island Studies Journal, 18(1), 143–160. https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.411
https://islandstudiesjournal.org/article/81129
WE WILL TAKE A BREAK IN DECEMBER
January meetings 2024: Tues 23rd Jan (9.30-10.30am London Time) and Thursday 25th Jan (5pm-6pm London Time):-
Galka, J. (2022). Mollusk Loves: Becoming With Native and Introduced Land Snails in the Hawaiian Islands. Island Studies Journal, 17(1), 102–122. https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.383
https://islandstudiesjournal.org/article/84744
February meetings: Tues 27th (9.30-10.30am London Time) and Thursday 29th (5pm-6pm London Time)
The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa
March meeting: Tues 26th (9.30-10.30am London Time) PLEASE NOTE THERE IS NO THURSDAY MEETING IN MARCH
The Outer Harbour: Stories by Wayde Compton
WE WILL TAKE A BREAK IN APRIL
May meetings 2024: Tues 28th May (9.30-10.30am London Time) and Thursday 30th May (5pm-6pm London Time):-
Anteaesthetics, by Rizvana Bradley
Future key themes for the reading group
· opacity and islands
· marronage and islands
· invisible islands
· pedagogy and islands
· the abyssal and islands
· Black studies and islands
· the speculative turn and islands
· posthumanism and islands
· extractivism and islands
· relational ontologies and islands
· contemporary readings of oceania
· poetics and contemporary island literatures
Zoom link for all meetings
https://newcastleuniversity.zoom.us/j/7212440124
Passcode: Meeting1
Previous reading group meetings:-
October meetings 2023: Tues 24th Oct (9.30-10.30am London Time) and Thursday 26th October (5pm-6pm London Time):-
Key theme: islands and the end of the human. The book ‘Annihilation’, by Jeff VanderMeer.
June meeting 2023: Tuesday 27th June (9.30-10.30am London Time) and Thursday 29th June (5pm-6pm London Time).
Key theme - colonialism, decoloniality, and island studies. We discussed …
Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2021). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Tabula Rasa, (38), 61-111.
Freely downloadable here https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/Tuck%20and%20Yang%202012%20Decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf
May 23rd and May 25th 2023 (5pm-6pm, London time) we discussed 'decolonising the university and island research'. Selected paper
Nadarajah, Y., Burgos Martinez, E. E., Su, P., & Grydehøj, A. (2022). Critical reflexivity and decolonial methodology in island studies: interrogating the scholar within. Island Studies Journal, 17(1), 1-23.
Freely downloadable here https://islandstudiesjournal.org/files/ISJ.380.pdf
29th April, 2021:- 10am LONDON TIME time slot - Sheller M. (2020) Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene. Duke University Press. (Introduced by Kasia Mika). Introductory Chapter can be found here.
5pm LONDON TIME time slot - Sheller M. (2020) Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene. Duke University Press. (Introduced by Mimi Sheller). Introductory Chapter can be found here.
27th May, 2021:-10am LONDON TIME - Perez C.S. (2020) “The Ocean in Us”: Navigating the Blue Humanities and Diasporic Chamoru Poetry, Humanities 2020, 9, 66. doi:10.3390/h9030066 E-pub ahead of print https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/9/3/66 (Introduced by Craig Santos Perez ).
5pm LONDON TIME - Perez C.S. (2020) “The Ocean in Us”: Navigating the Blue Humanities and Diasporic Chamoru Poetry, Humanities 2020, 9, 66. doi:10.3390/h9030066 E-pub ahead of print https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/9/3/66 (Introduced by Jon Pugh).
24th June, 2021 10am LONDON TIME - Hayward P. (2012) The constitution of assemblages and the aquapelagality of Haida Gwaii. Shima, 6(2), 1-8. Available here (Introduced by Christian Depraetere).
5pm LONDON TIME - Hayward P. (2012) The constitution of assemblages and the aquapelagality of Haida Gwaii. Shima, 6(2), 1-8. Available here (Introduced by Valérie Vezina).
29th July 2021 - (note there are two short readings for this session). 10 am LONDON TIME - Teaiwa K. M. (2011) ‘Recovering Ocean Island,’ Life Writing, 8(1), pp. 87-100. Article available here (presented by Katerina Teaiwa) and Teaiwa K. M. (2020) Visualizing Banaba: Art and Research about a Diffracted Pacific Island. Refract: An Open Access Visual Studies Journal, 3(1) 10.5070/R73151194 Article available here (presented by Katerina Teaiwa).
5 pm LONDON TIME - Teaiwa K. M. (2011) ‘Recovering Ocean Island,’ Life Writing, 8(1), pp. 87-100. Article available here (presented by Katerina Teaiwa) and Teaiwa K. M. (2020) Visualizing Banaba: Art and Research about a Diffracted Pacific Island. Refract: An Open Access Visual Studies Journal, 3(1) 10.5070/R73151194 Article available here (Introduced by Delilah Griswold).
30th September, 2021 10am LONDON TIME - Flores T. and Stephens M.A. (eds) (2017) Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago. Durham. Duke University Press. (Introduced by Kasia Mika). Intro to the book available here
30th September, 2021 5pm LONDON TIME - Flores T. and Stephens M.A. (eds) (2017) Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago. Durham. Duke University Press. (Introduced by Tatiana Flores and Michelle Stephens) Intro to the book available here
28th October, 2021 - 5pm London Time. Davis, S. (2020) Islands and oceans: Reimagining sovereignty and social change. University of Georgia Press. (Introduced by Sasha Davis). Intro to book available here.
27th January, 2022 - 5pm LONDON TIME. Wakefield S. (2020) Anthropocene Backloop: experimentation in unsafe operating space. Open Humanities Press. Free book download. http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/titles/anthropocene-backloop/ (Introduced by Stephanie Wakefield).
24th February, 2022. 5pm LONDON TIME - Roberts, B. R. (2021) Borderwaters: Amid the Archipelagic States of America. Duke University Press. Introduction available here https://www.dukeupress.edu/borderwaters (Introduced by Brian Russell Roberts)
April 21st, 2022. 5pm LONDON TIME - Glissant É. (1997) Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. (Introduced by David Chandler).
September 29th, 2022. 5pm LONDON TIME - Benítez-Rojo A. (1997) The Repeating Island. Duke University Press. (Introduced by Mónica Fernández Jiménez).
October 27th, 2002. 5pm LONDON TIME - Alexis Pauline Gumbs ‘M Archive: After the End of the World’. Duke University Press. (Introduced by Anne-Sophie Bogetoft Mortensen).
November 24th, 2022. 5pm LONDON TIME Sophie Chao ‘In the Shadow of Palms: more-than-human becomings in West Papua’. Duke University Press. (Introduced by Elena Burgos Martinez) Introduction to book herehttps://www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-shadow-of-the-palms