[Anthropgrad] Seminar

[Fay castles]

*1:00AM
Seminar Room A, April 21 2009*


      Ambivalent Empire: Indigenous and colonial histories of the
      Trobriand Islands
      Andrew Connelly - PAH Candidate

My doctoral research investigates the colonial history of the Trobriand 
Islands of Papua New Guinea. My goal is to write a microhistory that 
provides a critical synthesis of the administrative history of the 
islands during colonial rule, as seen through the lens of government 
documentation, balanced with indigenous histories and historicity as 
documented by first-hand investigation in the islands. While the 
Trobriands have long been seen as a venue for anthropological research 
and writing, the administrative, political and economic history of the 
group has been somewhat neglected. A large corpus of extant colonial 
government documents from the islands provides an excellent opportunity 
to flesh out this unwritten history. These documents – patrol reports, 
station journals and related material – while chronicling the activities 
of the Australian administrators, also provide tantalizing glimpses into 
local lives, politics and personalities. These glimpses can be fleshed 
out with oral history from the islands, providing indigenous histories 
to counterbalance long-prevailing colonial accounts.

*Enquiries:*
Pacific & Asian History Division ext. 53106


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Fay Castles
Departmental Administrator
Department of Anthropology
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200
+61-2-612 52162  Fax: +61-2-612 53023
Fay.Castles at anu.edu.au
http://rspas.anu.edu.au/anthropology
ANU CRICOS Provider Number: 00120C
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