From Micronesians and Polynesians to Europeans, Chinese and Okinawans, when people first traveled to islands in the Pacific, they brought domesticated animals with them. As food sources and as companions, these animals had an important role in shaping island societies and in mediating encounters between travelers, settlers, and indigenes. This lecture will trace the place of pigs in encounters between these groups in Hawaii, Ryūkyū/Okinawa, and Japan, from the time of the earliest settlement until after World War II. At the same time, it will show how the ways travelers talked and wrote about domestic animals in other societies revealed their understandings of property, freedom, and human society. Speaker: Jordan Sand, Professor of Japanese History, Georgetown University
Manhattan, New York, NY