What is transpacific studies? How might it align or conflict with related interdisciplinary fields of inquiry such as Asian American studies, postcolonial studies, environmental humanities, Indigenous studies, and Taiwan studies? What new perspectives might transpacific approaches help us to produce about histories and cultures within and across Pacific spaces? What role(s) might cultural producers and cultural critics (including those of us in Taiwan) play to extend our understanding of this emerging field?

In this graduate seminar, we will approach these questions by considering transpacific studies as an unsettled and contested field of inquiry that is taking shape in a moment marked by large-scale initiatives such as the proposed (and abandoned) Trans-Pacific Partnership and its successor the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. In our investigation, transpacific studies will address some of the implications of these state-directed initiatives, but our focus will not be limited to them. Instead, our goal will be to attend to the ways non-state actors including theorists, critics, teachers, writers, and filmmakers have attempted to reimagine and rearticulate relations—including Indigenous-settler relations and Indigenous-Indigenous relations—in seemingly scattered Pacific sites. These sites will likely include Guam, Taiwan, Hawai‘i, the Marshall Islands, New Zealand, as well as other Pacific Islands. These of course are not the only sites worth investigating, but they will provide opportunities for us to focus our discussion and to develop our responses to some key critical and cultural texts.

This seminar welcomes international and local students who are curious about developments in transpacific studies. Please note that students will be expected to read widely across interdisciplinary debates, to reflect upon previously held commonsense ideas, and to write regularly about the course texts. As the issues under investigation in this seminar are still unfolding, we may add additional relevant reading materials or other cultural texts as they become available.