In Focus: Frontier Shores—Ethnography, Colonialism, and Oceania from the Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Century

The late nineteenth century saw the application of the growing discipline of Anthropology as both a powerful tool of colonial control as well as an ideological justification for it. This theme will be explored in detail in the context of Oceania—the vast region encompassing Australia, New Zealand, and the tropical Pacific islands. This course will be the first of two In Focus courses leading to the 2016 BGC exhibition, and is essential foundation for students wishing to participate in that. As a major component of the course, material culture from the region will be used as an analytical tool for the themes, cultures, and encounters discussed. Beginning with the voyages of Cook, and ending with the decline in the so-called armchair period of Anthropology in the early twentieth century, the course will examine cross-cultural contact and the contest for power between indigenous and non-indigenous people, processes of “othering,” and the manufacture of authenticity. Many of the indigenous people of Oceania were perceived in mainstream European scientific thought as inhabiting the lowest tiers of humanity, considered stagnant, incapable of change, savage, and doomed to perish. Although these notions have long since been discredited, their impact on the development of anthropology, colonial policy, and national identity will be explored in detail. This will illustrate respective historic and cultural features, the inter-relations between differing peoples, as well as the development of anthropological thought in Oceania. 3 credits. Satisfies the non-Western requirement.