Navigation

Keywords: Art, Empire, Pacific, Race, Indigeneity, Resistance

Pacific Islands that have been conquered and annexed by the United States are vital sites for interrogating the forces of colonization—political, economic, scientific, and cultural—and responses to them. This panel seeks proposals that examine the visual and material culture of the Pacific with an emphasis on how images and objects endorse or resist the United States’ mission of expansion and exploitation. Papers might address how diverse media, including paintings, advertisements, photographs, anthropological texts, tourist ephemera, and films, have served the colonial agendas of the U.S. government and American businesses; how objects and images work to resist to colonial powers and racial prejudices; and/or how visual and material culture trigger larger conversations about Indigenous rights and culture, racial plurality, and the prohibition or influx of immigrants in the Pacific. Representations of and objects produced in the Pacific offer insights into the complexities of American empire building and highlight ways in which U.S. interventions have been supported or rejected through visual and material expressions.