Dear BLUE companions, 

We are happy to invite you to our fifth BLUE reading seminar on 11 August 2021 from kl 15.00 – 17.00. 

For this meeting we will read and talk about the book “Oceanic histories” edited by David Armitage, Alison Bashford & Sujit Sivasundaram (2017).  

Oceanic Histories is the first comprehensive account of world history focused not on the land but viewed through the Earth's surface covered by water. In the book a variety of (regionally focused) essays analyze both “the plural oceans of the world” and  ”the singular world ocean”, while bringing both into dialogue and envisaging world history through oceanic and maritime regions. 

As the essay’s timelines and terms of discussion differ from sea to sea, from ocean to ocean, their sequence charts how histories and geographies as modes of knowledge became linked to the sea and its relation with land over the long durée. 

In this BLUE discussion we ask ourselves how oceans are conceptualized in regional studies. In contrast to our last reading session, in which we have discussed a more “technical” approach to the ocean, this session asks how to think a “vernacular” ocean as a phenomenon which is at once global and local. Oceanic Histories helps us along this path by paying attention to the relation between world histories, the world’s oceans and the world ocean. It encourages us to pay attention to the way in which globalization was driven by European maritime empires and how to simultaneously engage with other traditions of writing extra-European ocean worlds.  

What is the fluid movement between oceans and seas in the context of a world ocean and how are their historical temporalities, world making practices and material particularities entangled? 

Please prepare to join us in these grappling by reading:

• Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Pacific Ocean
• Chapter 3: The Atlantic Ocean
• Chapter 5: The Mediterranean Sea
• Chapter 7: The Sea of Japan / Korea’s East sea
• Chapter 11: The Southern Ocean

Oceanic Histories is available as E-book via (AU) library services. Please be in touch should you have trouble accessing it from your respective institution.  

BLUE member Fine Brendtner will start off the discussion with a few questions. To sign up for the workshop (to be held on Zoom), send an email to Fine Brendtner at: brendtner@cas.au.dk   

Please feel free to circulate this invitation to friends and colleagues.