The Pacific World
4PM Public Lecture by David Armitage, co-editor of Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People (2014)
Class of 1947 Room, Homer Babbidge Library
David Armitage is Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and current Chair of the Department of History at Harvard Univesity. He opens Pacific Histories (co-edited with Alison Bashford) with:
The Pacific Ocean is often thought of as a centre. For its inhabitants -- like the Tongan-Fijian intellectual Epeli Hau'ofa -- it was cultural, physical and political home. For those imagining the Pacific from without -- such as the American novelist Herman Melville -- this heart-shaped ocean was the very heart of earth itself. For the Island, the Pacific was the centre of his world; for the American, it was the centre of the world. What, then, is the history of this ocean that is so often perceived as a fulcrum? If it is a pivot around which various worlds turn, what is its place in world history?
Free and open to the public. This event is organized by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and co-sponsored by the UConn Humanities Institute.
For more information, contact: Ms. Fe Delos-Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu