ThePacific:Past,Present,Future

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course is aimed at establishing literacy in the Pacific Islands, their storied histories, and their complex presence. It will take students through the Indigenous human geographies in the Pacific, the coming of Europeans, and the establishment of spheres of influence through various economies and imperial activities. It will pay close attention to the causes and consequences of power shifts, the imposition of imperial powers and resistance to it as well as the movement of Asian people into the island Pacific as indentured plantation laborers from the mid-C19th. It will investigate the building of tensions that led to World War Two and what happened in its aftermath. From here the course looks at the reasons the Pacific Islands have returned to western focus as the frontline of climate change and more urgently still, driven by massive and recent Chinese attention as an extension of its Belt and Road Initiative. As well as paying close attention to perspectives from Washington, Canberra, Wellington, Paris, and Beijing, this course will be Pacific-focused, giving much attention to Pacific island actors, voices, and perspectives, and framed around the urgent situation of the present. Information about the course instructor Patricia O'Brien, Ph.D., can be found at this link: https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/0031Q000025nA3OQAU/patricia-obrien