From early explorers to contemporary scientists, naturalists have examined island flora and fauna of Oceania, discovering new species, carefully documenting the lives of animals, and creating work central to the image of Oceania. These “discoveries” and exploratory moves have had profound local and global impacts. Often, however, local knowledge and communities are silent in the ethologies and histories that naturalists produce. This volume analyzes the ways that Indigenous and non-Indigenous naturalists have made island natures visible to a wider audience, their relationship with the communities where they work, as well as the unique natures that they explore and help make. In staking out an area of naturalist histories, each contributor addresses the relationship between naturalists and Oceanic communities, how these histories shaped past and present place and practices, the influence on conservations and development projects, and the relationship between scientific and indigenous knowledge. The essays span across colonial and postcolonial frames, tracing shifts in biological practice from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century focus on taxonomy and discovery to the twentieth-century disciplinary restructurings and new collecting strategies, and contemporary concerns with biodiversity loss, conservation, and knowledge formation. The production of scientific knowledge is typically seen in ethnographic accounts as oppositional, contrasting Indigenous and western, local and global, objective and subjective. Such dichotomous views reinforce differences and further exaggerate inequities in the production of knowledge. More dangerously, value distinctions become embedded in discussions of Indigenous identity, rights, and sovereignty. Contributors acknowledge that these dichotomous narratives have dominated the approach of the scientific community while informing how social scientists have understood the contributions of Pacific communities. The essays offer a nuanced gradient as historical narratives of scientific investigation, in dialogue with local histories, and reveal greater levels of participation in the creation of knowledge. The volume highlights how power infuses the scientific endeavor and offers a distinct and diverse view of knowledge production in Oceania. Combining senior and emerging international scholars, the collection will be of interest to researchers in the social sciences, history, as well as biology and allied fields.

The democratic election of Nelson Mandela as president of South Africa in 1994 marked the demise of apartheid and the beginning of a new struggle to define the nation’s past. History after Apartheid analyzes how, in the midst of the momentous shift to an inclusive democracy, South Africa’s visual and material culture represented the past while at the same time contributing to the process of social transformation. Considering attempts to invent and recover historical icons and narratives, art historian Annie E. Coombes examines how strategies for embodying different models of historical knowledge and experience are negotiated in public culture—in monuments, museums, and contemporary fine art. History after Apartheid explores the dilemmas posed by a wide range of visual and material culture including key South African heritage sites. How prominent should Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress be in the museum at the infamous political prison on Robben Island? How should the postapartheid government deal with the Voortrekker Monument mythologizing the Boer Trek of 1838? Coombes highlights the contradictory investment in these sites among competing constituencies and the tensions involved in the rush to produce new histories for the “new” South Africa. She reveals how artists and museum officials struggled to adequately represent painful and difficult histories ignored or disavowed under apartheid, including slavery, homelessness, and the attempted destruction of KhoiSan hunter-gatherers. Describing how contemporary South African artists address historical memory and the ambiguities uncovered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Coombes illuminates a body of work dedicated to the struggle to simultaneously remember the past and move forward into the future.

A History of Queensland explores from the time of earliest human habitation up to the present.

Opening a dialogue between the literary and filmic works produced in Central Europe and in the Anglophone world, this volume explores the role of affects and emotions such as shame, fascination and withdrawal in contemporary literature and culture.

Bringing together noted scholars in the fields of literary, cultural, gender, and race studies, this edited volume challenges us to reconsider our understanding of the Cold War, revealing it to be a global phenomenon rather than just a binary conflict between U.S. and Soviet forces. Shining a spotlight on writers from the war’s numerous fronts and applying lenses of race, gender, and decolonization, the essayists present several new angles from which to view the tense global showdown that lasted roughly a half-century. Ultimately, they reframe the Cold War not merely as a divide between the Soviet Union and the United States, but between nations rich and poor, and mostly white and mostly not. By emphasizing the global dimensions of the Cold War, this innovative collection reveals emergent forms of post-WWII empire that continue to shape our world today, thereby raising the question of whether the Cold War has ever fully ended.