Course syllabus

PACIFIC 201 - Semester 2, 2016

MONDAY 1-2pm (Arts 1-203), THURSDAY 1-2pm (Arts 1-203)

TUTORIALS: FRIDAY 11-12pm (201E-512) OR FRIDAY 12-1pm (201E-512)

LECTURER:  Dr Melani Anae,  Fale Complex, Bldg 273, 201A      

                        Contact details: Ext.87436. Email: m.anae@auckland.ac.nz

TUTOR:         Natalie Toevai

COURSE CONTENT:

This 15 point course is concerned with the critical examination of the responses to the changes resulting from contact with outside influences up to World War II. It will take the view that Pacific peoples were active participants rather than passive victims in their encounters with outsiders. The social, economic and political aspects of the dialectical transformation of three South Pacific societies will be explored.

The specific objectives of the course are to:

• Develop students’ ability to critically evaluate the theoretical perspectives and the literature which informs the debates about the 'histories' of Pacific societies and cultures as they are presented and interpreted in historical and ethnographic studies and in the writings of Pacific Islands scholars up to World War II, and;

• Develop students’ ability to understand and reflect on dominant western and indigenous perspectives of the centrality of the diversity and complications of Polynesian cultural systems and the transformations of Polynesian cultures in the unraveling of Polynesian histories.