Jointly organized by the BCDSS and the Global Heritage Lab, this book talk forms part of the ARC Discovery Project Unfreedom, Voices, Redress: Plantation Cultures of the Western Pacific and will feature discussion of recent publications by a writer, an artist, and a historian.The three invited guests will engage in the question how indenture, blackbirding and other forms of dependency re-ordered the Western Pacific after slavery was abolished in the British Atlantic and in the US. It furthermore wants to pay special attention to not only Pacific but also Pacific women’s voices to shed light on the history of vast numbers of Indian, Pacific and Melanesian peoples displaced through (forced) migration and laboring on plantations that emerged in contexts of British (and German) colonial endeavors.
The three books discussed in this session are:
- Margaret Mishra, Women, Indenture, and Resistance (Oxford UP, 2026)
- Kirsten McGavin, Untethered: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Papua New Guinea (Kokomo Ink, 2025).
- Jasmine Togo-Brisby, Ungeographic, 2025.