EN2XX/EN3XX Sea of Stories: Writing the Pacific World
Overview
The islands of the Pacific Ocean have been imagined as exotic fantasy spaces for European imperial adventure, their white beaches and lush forests populated by pirates, cannibals and castaways. In literature, fantasies of Pacific paradise date back to the romantic visions of Tahiti that captivated Europeans in the eighteenth century, as well as the popular Robinsonades and South Seas Romances that followed in their wake. This module investigates how writers in and from the region have worked against these narratives by telling alternative stories about the waves of colonial capitalism, environmental crisis and resistance that swept the modern Pacific World.
From Oceanic storytelling to the South Seas tales of Herman Melville, R. L. Stevenson and Somerset Maugham, through to post-independence writing by Albert Wendt, John Kasaipwalova and Epeli Hau‘ofa, among others, we ask how writers in the Pacific have responded to the upheavals of island indenture and the plantation system as well as their afterlives in contemporary extractivism, nuclear testing, tourism, and rising sea levels. While we approach literature as a privileged medium for registering island history as it is lived and experienced, we also maintain a critical focus on the question of who is able to tell – or write – stories about the Pacific. How, this module asks, do small islands become exemplary sites for reading world-history? And how has this history shaped the ‘sea of stories’, in turn, by influencing what is written, published, and made available to us as readers?
Assessment
Intermediate:
- 1 x 3,500-word essay
Finalists:
- 1 x 4,000-word essay
Syllabus 2026/27
Indicative syllabus (Subject to change):
Week 1: Oceanic Storytelling and the ‘Opening’ of the Pacific World. Selections from David Kalakaua, The Legends and Myths of Hawaii (1888); Jonathan Lamb et al., Exploration and Exchange: A South Seas Anthology, 1680-1900; Gregory Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World.
Week 2: The Island Resource Rush and the South Seas Romance. Herman Melville,Typee: A Romance of the Pacific (1846). Discussion of the South Seas Romance on screen.
Week 3: Planters, Prospectors, Printers. R. L. Stevenson, South Sea Tales (1893) (‘The Beach of Falesá, The Ebb-Tide, ‘The Bottle Imp’ and ‘Something In It’).
Week 4: White Contagion. W. Somerset Maugham,The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands(1921) (‘Rain’ and ‘Mackintosh’); Jack London,South Sea Tales(1911) (‘Mauki’ and ‘The Inevitable White Man’).
Week 5: Afterlives of the Plantation. Albert Wendt, ‘Inside Us the Dead’ (1976), ‘Flying-Fox in a Freedom Tree’ (1974) and ‘Prospecting’ (1983); Subramani, ‘Gamalian’s Woman’ fromThe Fantasy-Eaters(1988).
Week 7: Decolonization and Pacific Print Cultures. John Kasaipwalova, ‘Betel Nut is Bad Magic for Airplanes’ (1971); Akanisi Sobusobu, ‘The Taboo’ (1975); Vanessa Griffen, ‘The Concert’ (1973); discussion of Pacific little magazines; excerpt from Maebh Long and Matthew Hayward,The Rise of Pacific Literature: Decolonization, Radical Campuses, and Modernism (2025).
Week 8: Development, Tourism, Extractivism. Epeli Hau‘ofa, Tales of the Tikongs (1988); excerpts from Atu Emberson-Bain (ed.), Sustainable Development or Malignant Growth? Perspectives of Pacific Island Women and Katerina Teaiwa, Consuming Ocean Island.
Week 9: Militarisation and Nuclear Fallout. Robert Barclay, Meļaļ (2002).
Week 10: Rising tides and the Oceanic weird. H. P. Lovecraft, ‘Dagon’ (1917); J. G. Ballard,‘The Drowned Giant’ and ‘The Terminal Beach’ (1964); Alexis Wright, ‘Whale Bone City’ (2017); Ellen van Neerven, ‘Water’ in Heat and Light (2014); Sharae Deckard and Kirsten Oloff, ‘Marine Crisis and the New Oceanic weird’.
Convenor:
Dr Caitlin Vandertop
Moodle not in use
Useful Links:
Assessment
Syllabus
Secondary Reading
Note:
This module requires engagement with theology, philosophy, and history, as well as literature and literary criticism.