This book offers a contextual understanding of the contemporary Pacific art movement in New Zealand. As well as examining key individual artists, the book also addresses issues that underlie this movement and the inspirations for creating this art.

The Pacific has long been a site for debates over disciplinary approaches and the ethics and politics of research within neocolonial and postcolonial contexts. This volume makes a significant contribution to these debates and to the related and ongoing exchanges concerning area studies, the globalization of capitalism, and its attendant cultural, social, and political effects. In so doing, the authors link work from the Pacific with theoretical and methodological issues raised in other areas of the globe. This collection of the best from Contemporary Pacific will prove invaluable to scholars, students and all interested in the study of history, culture, and identity in the Pacific and in (post) colonial societies everywhere.

The twenty-one articles in this text describe and analyze contemporary political, social, and economic issues in the three culture areas of Oceania: Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. Chapters are written by noted specialists in all areas and are well mixed regionally and topically to give a broad perspective on contemporary change and development in the Pacific Islands. For social scientists working throughout Oceania and all those interested in contemporary Pacific cultures.

Since the late 1960s, drama by Pacific Island playwrights has flourished throughout Oceania. Although many Pacific Island cultures have a broad range of highly developed indigenous performance forms—including oral narrative, clowning, ritual, dance, and song—scripted drama is a relatively recent phenomenon. Emerging during a period of region-wide decolonization and indigenous self-determination movements, most of these plays reassert Pacific cultural perspectives and performance techniques in ways that employ, adapt, and challenge the conventions and representations of Western theater. Drawing together discussions in theater and performance studies, historiography, Pacific studies, and postcolonial studies, Remaking Pacific Pasts offers the first full-length comparative study of this dynamic and expanding body of work. It introduces readers to the field with an overview of significant works produced throughout the region over the past fifty years, including plays in English and in French, as well as in local vernaculars and lingua francas. The discussion traces the circumstances that have given rise to a particular modern dramatic tradition in each site and also charts routes of theatrical circulation and shared artistic influences that have woven connections beyond national borders. This broad survey contextualizes the more detailed case studies that follow, which focus on how Pacific dramatists, actors, and directors have used theatrical performance to critically engage the Pacific’s colonial and postcolonial histories. Chapters provide close readings of selected plays from Hawai‘i, Aotearoa/New Zealand, New Caledonia/Kanaky, and Fiji that treat events, figures, and legacies of the region’s turbulent past: Captain Cook’s encounters, the New Zealand Wars, missionary contact, the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, and the Fiji coups. The book explores how, in their remembering and retelling of these pasts, theater artists have interrogated and revised repressive and marginalizing models of historical understanding developed through Western colonialism or exclusionary indigenous nationalisms, and have opened up new spaces for alternative historical narratives and ways of knowing. In so doing, these works address key issues of identity, genealogy, representation, political parity, and social unity, encouraging their audiences to consider new possibilities for present and future action. This study emphasizes the contribution of artistic production to social and political life in the contemporary Pacific, demonstrating how local play production has worked to facilitate processes of creative nation building and the construction of modern regional imaginaries. Remaking Pacific Pasts makes valuable contributions to Pacific literature, world theater history, Pacific studies, and postcolonial studies. The book opens up to comparative critical discussion a geopolitical region that has received little attention from theater and performance scholars, extending our understanding of the form and function of theater in different cultural contexts. It enriches existing discussions in postcolonial studies about the decolonizing potential of literary and artistic endeavors, and it suggests how theater might function as a mode of historical enquiry and debate, adding to discussions about ways in which Pacific histories might be developed, challenged, or recalibrated. Consequently, the book stimulates new discussions in Pacific studies where theater has, to date, suffered from a lack of critical exposure. Carefully researched and original in its approach, Remaking Pacific Pasts will appeal to scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduate students in theater and performance studies and Pacific Islands studies; it will also be of interest to cultural historians and to specialists in cultural studies and postcolonial studies.

This diverse collection of essays examines important issues related to mental health among Pacific Islanders through the topics of identity, spirituality, the unconscious, mental trauma, and healing. Contributors: Emeline Afeaki-Mafile‘o, Margaret Nelson Agee, Siautu Alefaio, A. Aukahi Austin, Tina Berking, Philip Culbertson, Caroline Salumalo Fatialofa, Yvette Guttenbeil-Po‘uhila, Joseph Keawe‘aimoku Kaholokula, David Lui, Karen Lupe, Maika Lutui, Cabrini ‘Ofa Makasiale, Tavita T. Maliko, Peta Pila Palalagi, Suiamai Simi, Seilosa Skipps-Patterson, Karanina Siaosi Sumeo, To‘oa Jemaima Tiatia, Sione Tu‘itahi, Fia T. Turner-Tupou.

A pathbreaking exploration of the international and intercultural connections within Oceanian performance

"Brings artists, academics, museum curators and gallery owners together to discuss the production and promotion of contemporary Pacific arts in the global art world" BOOK JACKET.