Empire and Environment
Image from Ernest Protheroe, "Every Boy's Book of Railways and Steamships" (London, 1911).
Making Critical Scholarship out of Imperial Debris:
Thirteen Ecocritical Takes on the Transpacific

Book review: Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific. Edited by Jeffrey Santa Ana, Heidi Amin-Hong, Rina Garcia Chua and Zhou Xiaojing. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022.

Booker & Ericson
Image from Ernest Protheroe, "Every Boy's Book of Railways and Steamships" (London, 1911).
Interview with Dr Matthew M. Booker
and Dr Kjell Ericson
"The Seed Oyster Inspectors: Labour and Power in Trans-Pacific Tidelands, 1945-1970s"

Dr Matther M. Booker and Dr Kjell Ericson talked to us about how they use movements of oysters to trace trans-Pacific patterns and practices of labour, migration, and environmental change.

Conference report
Image from Ernest Protheroe, "Every Boy's Book of Railways and Steamships" (London, 1911).
Conference report:
Indigenous Histories of Encounters in Asia-Pacific

Report from the conference "Indigenous Histories of Encounters in Asia-Pacific" (Wolfson College, Cambridge, 19-20 June), which was sponsored by The Pacific Circle.

Anderson
Image from Ernest Protheroe, "Every Boy's Book of Railways and Steamships" (London, 1911).
Warwick Anderson awarded the 2023 Bernal Prize

The Pacific Circle warmly congratulates its former President, Professor Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney) on the award of the 2023 Bernal Prize.

Williams
Image from Ernest Protheroe, "Every Boy's Book of Railways and Steamships" (London, 1911).
Interview with Dr Madi Williams
Re-centring South Polynesian Pūrākau (Ancestral Narratives)

Dr Madi Williams (University of Canterbury) talked to us about the boundaries of history and the inclusion of Indigenous and non-Western perspectives in Aotearoa New Zealand and South Pacific histories.

Chao
Image from Ernest Protheroe, "Every Boy's Book of Railways and Steamships" (London, 1911).
Interview with Dr Sophie Chao
Time Has Come to a Stop: Temporalities of Loss and Resistance on the West Papuan Plantation Frontier

Dr Sophie Chao (University of Sydney) talked to us about how Indigenous Marind communities in West Papua sense and make sense of the temporal transformations wrought by the agroindustrial expansion of oil palm plantations.

Kroupa
Image from Ernest Protheroe, "Every Boy's Book of Railways and Steamships" (London, 1911).
Interview with Dr Sebestian Kroupa
On Bezoars and Other Healing Stones in Manila: Making Knowledge Across Indo-Pacific Worlds, c.1700

Dr Sebestian Kroupa (University of Cambridge) talked to us about the Indo-Pacific networks that underpinned the global circulation of bezoars and other healing stones in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Steel
Image from Ernest Protheroe, "Every Boy's Book of Railways and Steamships" (London, 1911).
Interview with Dr Frances Steel
‘The Miracle of Ice from Heat’: Mechanical Cold in Pacific History

Dr Frances Steel (University of Otago) talked to us about her new research project, which examines how the industrial innovation of chilling or freezing perishable produce transformed relationships between climates, foods, and peoples in the modern Pacific.

Roque
Interview with Dr Ricardo Roque
‘Scientific Occupation’ and the Timor Anthropological Mission in the Late Portuguese Colonial Empire

Dr Ricardo Roque (University of Lisbon) talked to us about the histories of the anthropometric and racialized projects undertaken by Portuguese imperial expeditions in East Timor, including their enduring legacies today.

Mitchell
Interview with Dr Mary X. Mitchell
Nuclear Weapons and the Unsettling of Sovereignty in the Marshall Islands, 1944-1963

Dr Mary X Mitchell (University of Toronto) talked to us about the sociolegal history of US nuclear blasting in the Marshall Islands, focusing on how Islanders and others used legal claims to challenge US blasting and reshaped US power in the process.

Newsletter
Image from Ernest Protheroe, "Every Boy's Book of Railways and Steamships" (London, 1911).
New issue of the Pacific Circle Newsletter

New issue of the Pacific Circle Newsletter (4.9) was published on 1 January.

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The Pacific Circle was established in 1985 to support and promote research and exchanges in the history of science, medicine, and other practices of knowledge in the Asia-Pacific region, broadly construed. We take knowledge to encompass a cross-cultural diversity of beliefs about the workings of the universe and the command of a myriad of techniques applied to investigations and manipulations of worldly phenomena.

The Circle circulates its Newsletter every other Monday. The Newsletter includes bibliographies of recent articles, book chapters and books, calls for papers, research notes, and queries. Please email the editor, Professor Peter Hoffenberg at peterh@hawaii.edu if you would like to receive the Newsletter or if you would like to share your publications, research questions, etc.