Module details for 2026/27.

15 credits

FHEQ Level 6

Module Outline

This module explores how culture, from ‘high’ to ‘low,’ metropolitan and ‘peripheral,’ developed historically alongside the ‘guns, germs and steel’ of European and American Pacific empires, and emerged as a powerful tool of control, but also resistance. We will look at a constellation of nineteenth and twentieth-century case studies from the Malay and Oceanian archipelagos of the Pacific that bring together imperial culture—sublime as Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian tableaus, and mundane as a Mai Tai ornamented by a cocktail umbrella in a tiki bar—and cultures of anti-colonialism in their multitude of forms. From the cargo cults of Papua New Guinea (the ‘Land of a Thousand Cultures’), Indonesian Nazi goreng, and Maori Rastafari in Aotearoa (New Zealand), to the anti-nuclear movement in the South Seas, Hawaiian Renaissance of the 1970s, and ‘hidden transcripts’ of overseas Filipino workers, we will examine the cultural lives of ‘salty subalterns’ through the complex and contested histories of race, religion, imperialism and indigeneity.

Module learning outcomes

Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of a closely defined topic.

Construct sophisticated written arguments that demonstrate intellectual maturity and integrity.

Situate, evaluate and analyse primary historical sources.

Relate the interpretation of primary sources to secondary interpretations.

Timing

Submission deadlines may vary for different types of assignment/groups of students.

Weighting

Coursework components (if listed) total 100% of the overall coursework weighting value.

How to read the week pattern

The numbers indicate the weeks of the term and how many events take place each week.