the global / oceanic / nineteenth century
symposium and workshop
keynote speaker
Alice Te Punga Somerville
Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) is a scholar, poet and irredentist. She writes and teaches at the intersections of literary studies, Indigenous studies and Pacific studies; after teaching in New Zealand, Australia and Hawai’i, she has recently taken up a professorship at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English language & literatures and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Her publications include Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania (2012), 250 Ways To Start an Essay about Captain Cook (2020) and a book of poetry Always Italicise: how to write while colonised (2022).
keynote speech
‘The Gauguin won’t distract you, will it?’:
nineteenth-century distractions
In Hibiscus Coast, a 2005 novel by Māori writer Paula Morris, the main character Emma paints illegal copies of iconic turn-of-the-century portraits of Māori by Goldie. In the same room is an authenticated, presumed lost, painting by Gauguin. Emma recognises the work of the famous French artist immediately and is warned:
“The Gauguin won’t distract you, will it? You can work with your back to it. It can’t be moved, obviously.”
“Obviously,” said Emma.
Distraction is a key element of the work we undertake as we reckon with the global nineteenth century. Thinking and writing against, alongside and between widely-circulated forms of representation is tricky. We find ourselves on a constant precipice of globality and specificity, and it’s not always clear where or how to strike the balance. As we seek to trace forms of connection that operate beyond as well as via colonial and Indigenous networks, we risk being distracted by existing forms, claims and shapes of history that “can’t be moved, obviously.” With a focus on specific examples and thinkers from the Indigenous Pacific, this talk will consider how different forms of ‘distraction’ can be paralysing – or productive – in our collective work.
featured speakers
Margaret Cohen
(Stanford University)
Boyd Cothran
(York University)
Michelle Decker
(Scripps College)
Humberto Garcia
(University of California, Merced)
Charne Lavery
(University of Pretoria and University of the Witwatersrand)
Kevin P. McDonald
(Loyola Marymount University)
Jimmy Packham
(University of Birmingham)
Adrian Shubert
(York University)