Ocean and Island Studies – serie

This book is a biographical history of Rottnest Island, a small carceral island offshore from Western Australia. Rottnest is also known as Wadjemup, or "the place across the water where the spirits are", by Noongar, the Indigenous people of south-western Australia.Through a series of biographical case studies of the diverse individuals connected to the island, the book argues that their particular histories lend Rottnest Island a unique heritage in which ​Indigenous, maritime, imperial, colonial, penal, and military histories intersect with histories of leisure and recreation. Tracing the way in which Wadjemup/Rottnest Island has been continually re-imagined and re-purposed throughout its history, the text explores the island’s carceral history, which has left behind it a painful community memory.Today it is best known as a beach holiday destination, a reputation bolstered by the "quokka selfie" trend, the online posting of photographs taken with the island’s cute native marsupial. This book will appeal to academic readers with an interest in Australian history, Aboriginal history, and the history of the British Empire, especially those interested in the burgeoning scholarship on the concept of "carceral archipelagos" and island prisons.

This book is a biographical history of Rottnest Island, a small carceral island offshore from Western Australia. Rottnest is also known as Wadjemup, or "the place across the water where the spirits are", by Noongar, the Indigenous people of south-western Australia.Through a series of biographical case studies of the diverse individuals connected to the island, the book argues that their particular histories lend Rottnest Island a unique heritage in which ​Indigenous, maritime, imperial, colonial, penal, and military histories intersect with histories of leisure and recreation. Tracing the way in which Wadjemup/Rottnest Island has been continually re-imagined and re-purposed throughout its history, the text explores the island’s carceral history, which has left behind it a painful community memory.Today it is best known as a beach holiday destination, a reputation bolstered by the "quokka selfie" trend, the online posting of photographs taken with the island’s cute native marsupial. This book will appeal to academic readers with an interest in Australian history, Aboriginal history, and the history of the British Empire, especially those interested in the burgeoning scholarship on the concept of "carceral archipelagos" and island prisons.

This book is an anthology of key essays that foregrounds coasts, islands, and shorelines as central to the scholarship on the oceanic environment and climate across South Asia. The volume is a collaborative effort amongst historians, anthropologists, and environmentalists to further understand the lifeworlds of the South Asian littoral that are neither fully aquatic or terrestrial, and inescapably both. Terra Aqua invokes a ‘third surface’ located in the interstice of land and water—deltas, estuaries, tidelands, beaches, swamps, sandbanks, and mudflats—and engages in a radical reconceptualization of coastal and shoreline terrains. The book explores uniquely endangered habitats and emergent templates of survival against rising seas and climatic disturbances with particular focus on the Bengal and Malabar coastlines. A critical, transdisciplinary contribution to the study of climate change in South Asia, Terra Aqua examines salinity and submergence, coastal erosion, subterranean degradation, and the depletion of littoral lifeways impacting marine communities and biospheres. It will be of particular interest to scholars of environment studies, ecology and climate change in the Global South, hydrology, geography, ocean and island studies, environmental justice, colonialism, and imperial and maritime history.

This book is an anthology of key essays that foregrounds coasts, islands, and shorelines as central to the scholarship on the oceanic environment and climate across South Asia. The volume is a collaborative effort amongst historians, anthropologists, and environmentalists to further understand the lifeworlds of the South Asian littoral that are neither fully aquatic or terrestrial, and inescapably both. Terra Aqua invokes a ‘third surface’ located in the interstice of land and water—deltas, estuaries, tidelands, beaches, swamps, sandbanks, and mudflats—and engages in a radical reconceptualization of coastal and shoreline terrains. The book explores uniquely endangered habitats and emergent templates of survival against rising seas and climatic disturbances with particular focus on the Bengal and Malabar coastlines. A critical, transdisciplinary contribution to the study of climate change in South Asia, Terra Aqua examines salinity and submergence, coastal erosion, subterranean degradation, and the depletion of littoral lifeways impacting marine communities and biospheres. It will be of particular interest to scholars of environment studies, ecology and climate change in the Global South, hydrology, geography, ocean and island studies, environmental justice, colonialism, and imperial and maritime history.

Part ethnography, part memoir, and part critical reflection on the Anthropocene, this book examines the ways that islands form and inform human experiences of the everyday and the extraordinary. Utilizing carefully considered anthropological perspectives drawn from over a decade of anthropological fieldwork, the author employs islands as a complex set of lenses to examine the ways that we are intimately connected, separated, and divided from ourselves, one another, and the planet. Moving across time, place and disciplinary boundaries, this book traces a narrative route from the remote islands of Micronesia to the subarctic expanses of northern Iceland, all in service of gaining a deeper understanding of the cultural resonance of islands.This book offers the reader a type of ideological travel guide, one that exchanges restaurant reviews and hotel recommendations for pathways of reflection and new modes of seeing and being in the world. It will be of interest to scholars in the social sciences and humanities, and readers from human geography, cultural studies, sociology, philosophy and American studies.

Part ethnography, part memoir, and part critical reflection on the Anthropocene, this book examines the ways that islands form and inform human experiences of the everyday and the extraordinary. Utilizing carefully considered anthropological perspectives drawn from over a decade of anthropological fieldwork, the author employs islands as a complex set of lenses to examine the ways that we are intimately connected, separated, and divided from ourselves, one another, and the planet. Moving across time, place and disciplinary boundaries, this book traces a narrative route from the remote islands of Micronesia to the subarctic expanses of northern Iceland, all in service of gaining a deeper understanding of the cultural resonance of islands.This book offers the reader a type of ideological travel guide, one that exchanges restaurant reviews and hotel recommendations for pathways of reflection and new modes of seeing and being in the world. It will be of interest to scholars in the social sciences and humanities, and readers from human geography, cultural studies, sociology, philosophy and American studies.

Adam’s Bridge offers the first comprehensive transdisciplinary study of the famous eponymous tombolo (also known as Ram Setu) combining its sacral, historical, geological, political, performative, and heritage aspects into one framework, viewed under the critical lenses of island studies and cultural theory.The book elucidates the entanglement of Adam’s Bridge’s discursive history with India’s colonial history, contemporary geology, domestic politics, and the nation’s emerging position in a complex geopolitical order in and around the Indian Ocean region, vis-à-vis increasing Sino-American involvement in Indo-Sri Lankan relations. Without foregrounding any absolute scientific claims on the location of the sandbars that inspired sage Valmiki’s Ram Setu and the Ramayan legacy or hindering narratives of religious faiths and folklore revolving around the structure, this intellectual historiography traces the parallel evolution of traditions of compassionate questioning and devotion for Indic sacred beliefs among commentators across the millennia from both Indian and non-Indian spectra, seen in juxtaposition with the biotic and abiotic diversity of the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay. Looking beyond secular-versus-religious debates, this book will be of interest to scholars of ocean and island studies, coastal economies, archipelagic geographies, environmental history, heritage studies, colonial studies, and cultural theory.Adam’s Bridge unifies a consortium of themes, ranging across ecological and livelihood sustainability, environmentalism, soteriology, economic and geostrategic history, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, in conceptualizing a compellingly nuanced chronicle for India’s enchanted ‘bridge.’

Adam’s Bridge offers the first comprehensive transdisciplinary study of the famous eponymous tombolo (also known as Ram Setu) combining its sacral, historical, geological, political, performative, and heritage aspects into one framework, viewed under the critical lenses of island studies and cultural theory.The book elucidates the entanglement of Adam’s Bridge’s discursive history with India’s colonial history, contemporary geology, domestic politics, and the nation’s emerging position in a complex geopolitical order in and around the Indian Ocean region, vis-à-vis increasing Sino-American involvement in Indo-Sri Lankan relations. Without foregrounding any absolute scientific claims on the location of the sandbars that inspired sage Valmiki’s Ram Setu and the Ramayan legacy or hindering narratives of religious faiths and folklore revolving around the structure, this intellectual historiography traces the parallel evolution of traditions of compassionate questioning and devotion for Indic sacred beliefs among commentators across the millennia from both Indian and non-Indian spectra, seen in juxtaposition with the biotic and abiotic diversity of the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay. Looking beyond secular-versus-religious debates, this book will be of interest to scholars of ocean and island studies, coastal economies, archipelagic geographies, environmental history, heritage studies, colonial studies, and cultural theory.Adam’s Bridge unifies a consortium of themes, ranging across ecological and livelihood sustainability, environmentalism, soteriology, economic and geostrategic history, and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, in conceptualizing a compellingly nuanced chronicle for India’s enchanted ‘bridge.’

This book charts the transoceanic history of South Asian women in California through their speech and songs across the twentieth century.Nicole Ranganath reimagines the history of the South Asian diaspora through an examination of gender and the dynamic interplay of water and land in the cultural history of Sikhs, a faith and cultural community that emerged in the Punjab region of north South Asia over 550 years ago. It shows how the history and music of transoceanic communities, in this case Sikhs, spilled beyond the boundaries of regions, empires and nation-states. It emphasizes the heterogeneity of the South Asia diaspora by uncovering the distinct history of women’s migration experiences, as well as an alternative oceanic imaginary among Sikhs that envisions unity in the cosmos. It foregrounds the pivotal role that women played in transforming Sikh communities in California through songs and female affinities. Based on six years of fieldwork in rural northern California, it explores song as a window into the interior lives of Sikh women through their performance of diverse genres: gadar anti-colonial songs, folk music, hymns, and autobiographical songs. This sonic history of South Asian women in the diaspora dislodges dominant paradigms in diaspora studies and oceanic humanities that depict men as mobile and women as stationary.Women and the Sikh Diaspora in California will interest scholars of migration, South Asia and South Asian American studies, oceanic humanities, Sikh studies, music, and women’s studies. It is also essential reading for anyone who is curious about global music and migration, as well as Sikh history.

This book charts the transoceanic history of South Asian women in California through their speech and songs across the twentieth century.Nicole Ranganath reimagines the history of the South Asian diaspora through an examination of gender and the dynamic interplay of water and land in the cultural history of Sikhs, a faith and cultural community that emerged in the Punjab region of north South Asia over 550 years ago. It shows how the history and music of transoceanic communities, in this case Sikhs, spilled beyond the boundaries of regions, empires and nation-states. It emphasizes the heterogeneity of the South Asia diaspora by uncovering the distinct history of women’s migration experiences, as well as an alternative oceanic imaginary among Sikhs that envisions unity in the cosmos. It foregrounds the pivotal role that women played in transforming Sikh communities in California through songs and female affinities. Based on six years of fieldwork in rural northern California, it explores song as a window into the interior lives of Sikh women through their performance of diverse genres: gadar anti-colonial songs, folk music, hymns, and autobiographical songs. This sonic history of South Asian women in the diaspora dislodges dominant paradigms in diaspora studies and oceanic humanities that depict men as mobile and women as stationary.Women and the Sikh Diaspora in California will interest scholars of migration, South Asia and South Asian American studies, oceanic humanities, Sikh studies, music, and women’s studies. It is also essential reading for anyone who is curious about global music and migration, as well as Sikh history.

This book examines the Southern Indian Ocean corridor as a geographic, geological, and atmospheric space, taking a critical oceanic humanities approach while never losing sight of the land and water interface.Using a range of disciplinary approaches and materials, Gupta and de Araújo hydrate territorial and land-based imaginations of the Southern African region by conceptualizing its oceanicity as a fluid and more than human materiality, synthetic situation, and geopolitical nexus. With a diverse set of case studies, they explore a variety of conceptual framings and methodologies, including science-technology-society studies, tourism and heritage studies, history, and international relations (IRs) – among others. The contributors cover a complex and vast imaginative geography, cross-cutting Portuguese, German, and British colonial traces in the region, and exploring land, water, and submerged spaces, from coastal towns and bridges to islands and archipelagos.A fresh approach to thinking about Atlantic and Indian Ocean coastlines in a relational and scalar manner for scholars across a range of disciplines focussed on Southern Africa.

This book examines the Southern Indian Ocean corridor as a geographic, geological, and atmospheric space, taking a critical oceanic humanities approach while never losing sight of the land and water interface.Using a range of disciplinary approaches and materials, Gupta and de Araújo hydrate territorial and land-based imaginations of the Southern African region by conceptualizing its oceanicity as a fluid and more than human materiality, synthetic situation, and geopolitical nexus. With a diverse set of case studies, they explore a variety of conceptual framings and methodologies, including science-technology-society studies, tourism and heritage studies, history, and international relations (IRs) – among others. The contributors cover a complex and vast imaginative geography, cross-cutting Portuguese, German, and British colonial traces in the region, and exploring land, water, and submerged spaces, from coastal towns and bridges to islands and archipelagos.A fresh approach to thinking about Atlantic and Indian Ocean coastlines in a relational and scalar manner for scholars across a range of disciplines focussed on Southern Africa.