"This ... volume comprises a wide range of chapters focusing on key figures in the development of New Zealand theatre and drama, such as, among others, Robert Lord, Ken Duncum, Gary Henderson, Stephen Sinclair, Hone Kouka, Briar-Grace Smith, Jacob Rajan, Lynda Chanwai-Earle, Nathaniel Lees, and Victor Rodger."--Publisher description.

"Samoan Art and Artists is a wide-ranging survey of both the traditional and contemporary arts of Samoa. The author has drawn on an extensive research base to present a contemporary and accessible picture of a vibrant culture. The book has a broad sweep, covering all facets of the Samoan arts, including canoe and house building, siapo (tapa) weaving, tattooing, oratory, adornment, all forms of performance art, the visual arts, and literature. An important feature of the book is the inclusion of profiles of living practitioners, both from Samoa and the large Samoan communities in other Pacific countries."--Publisher description.

Transgender identities and other forms of gender and sexuality that transcend the normative pose important questions about society, culture, politics, and history. They force us to question, for example, the forces that divide humanity into two gender categories and render them necessary, inevitable, and natural. The transgender also exposes a host of dynamics that, at first glance, have little to do with gender or sex, such as processes of power and domination; the complex relationship among agency, subjectivity, and structure; and the mutual constitution of the global and the local. Particularly intriguing is the fact that gender and sexual diversity appear to be more prevalent in some regions of the world than in others. This edited volume is an exploration of the ways in which non-normative gendering and sexuality in one such region, the Pacific Islands, are implicated in a wide range of socio-cultural dynamics that are at once local and global, historical, and contemporary. The authors recognize that different social configurations, cultural contexts, and historical trajectories generate diverse ways of being transgender across the societies of the region, but they also acknowledge that these differences are overlaid with commonalities and predictabilities. Rather than focus on the definition of identities, they engage with the fact that identities do things, that they are performed in everyday life, that they are transformed through events and movements, and that they are constantly negotiated. By addressing the complexities of these questions over time and space, this work provides a model for future endeavors that seek to embed dynamics of gender and sexuality in a broad field of theoretical import.

Spirits in Culture, History and Mind reintegrates spirits into comparative theories of religion, which have tended to focus on institutionalized forms of belief associated with gods. It brings an historical perspective to culturally patterned experiences with spirits, and examines spirits as a locus of tension between traditional and foreign values. Taking as a point of departure shifting local views of self, nine case studies drawn from Pacific societies analyze religious phenomena at the intersection of social, psychological and historical processes. The varied approaches taken in these case studies provide a richness of perspective, with each lens illuminating different aspects of spirit-related experience. All, however, bring a sense of historical process to bear on psychological and symbolic approaches to religion, shedding new light on the ways spirits relate to other cultural phenomena.

“An imaginative and thought-provoking study of clowning in Rotuma, especially of ritual clowning in contexts of marriage ceremonies and the weaving of fine mats.... Completely fascinating.” —Canberra Anthropology “A challenge to readers both in its form and content.... This book conveys the lively, complex and often hilarious elements, both of daily life and celebratory rituals, as they are expressed in contemporary culture.” —Journal of Intercultural Studies

Featuring chapters by a diverse range of leading international artists and theorists, this book suggests that contemporary art is increasingly characterized by the problem of where and when it is situated. While much advanced artistic speculation of the twentieth-century was aligned with the question “what is art?,” a key question for many artists and thinkers in the twenty-first century has become “where is art?” Contributors explore the challenge of meaningfully identifying and evaluating works located across multiple versions and locations in space and time. In doing so, they also seek to find appropriate language and criteria for evaluating forms of art that often straddle other realms of knowledge and activity. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, art criticism, and philosophy of art.