CORE C136   Pacific Islands and Diasporas

The Pacific Islands, also referred to as Oceania, constitutes a broad and complex range of political, social, economic, and cultural formations, ones that are not contained to the islands but have also traversed, through diasporic migrations, to North America and elsewhere. Students consider the vast geographic expanse of that trans-pacific by drawing together lived connections across islands and diasporic communities, particularly in the U.S. mainland. With a particular attention to the effects of U.S., Spanish, and Japanese imperialism across the Pacific, and to Indigenous demands for place-making amidst military and tourist projects imposed from outside, students examine the competing geographic ideas and political struggles that make place and meaning in the region. As Pacific Islanders continue to migrate within and beyond the Pacific Islands, such movements and flows prompt the questions: What, and where, is the Pacific? What does it mean to identify as Pacific Islander or Pasifika? How do Pacific Islanders in the U.S. fit into struggles for racial justice, immigrants’ rights, and decolonization in the global present?