[ANU Pacific.Institute] Pacific History Association Conference May 19-21, 2016 – Save the Date!

[Nicholas Mortimer]

SAVE THE DATE!
Mo'na: Our Pasts Before Us
22nd Pacific History Association Conference
May 19-21, 2016
Guam, Mariana Islands

Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Robert A. Underwood, University of Guam
Dr. Katerina Teaiwa, Australian National University
Dr. Greg Dvorak, Hitotsubashi University
and
Dr. David Hanlon, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

The University of Guam will host the 22nd Biennial Pacific History Association Conference on May 19-21, 2016. This event is the preeminent meeting of Pacific scholars from across the globe and will attract as many as 250 participants to present cutting edge research in Pacific History and related fields.
This year's theme is "Mo'na: Our Pasts Before Us."  In the Chamorro language, mo'na means "front, be first, or forward."  In addition to its literal spatial definition, it also refers temporally to the past -- to history as the time before or in front of our present moment.  This understanding of mo'na links to other Oceanic notions of a fluid and nonlinear history.  Yet, as in many other Pacific Islands, the pasts of the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands have long been marginalized and even belittled.  Mo'na, for example, appears in the term taotaomo'na -- literally, the first people or the people of the past -- but today used figuratively by some as a reference to malevolent spirits inhabiting our jungles.  Others, however, have been re-evaluating their relationship to these ancestors, venerating and interrogating, rather than demonizing them.  In similar ways, Islanders throughout Oceania are today actively reclaiming and resituating their pasts in ways that address longstanding divides in the historical canon.
The theme is timely as our conference will coincide with Guam’s hosting of the Festival of Pacific Arts, an event established in 1972 as a way for Pacific peoples to share and celebrate indigenous traditions that were thought to be eroding.  Artists will showcase living cultures rooted in the histories of their islands while our conference will feature research that will shape the histories our future generations will come to know.  In examining the complexities of our Pacific pasts, this conference will embrace the notion of looking forward to face the past, in the process carving out new and promising futures that celebrate our rich and living island histories.
Coming soon – Call for Panels (announcement in late March); Call for Papers (announcement in May);  Early Registration (Aug 2015 – Jan 2016); Late Registration (upon space availability). For more information, contact pha2016guam at gmail.com<mailto:pha2016guam at gmail.com>
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