Description: This book shares critical and creative insights on the methodologies in island studies. It explores why and how islands serve powerful analytical ends. Considering interdisciplinary questions shaping the field, the book models what it means to think about and rethink island methodologies.
Brief description: Elizabeth McMahon is professor of English at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her book, Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination, won two national awards for literary scholarship. She has edited Southerly, Australia's oldest literary journal, since 2008 and previously edited Australian Humanities Review.
Review Quotes:
"A book that simultaneously captures and celebrates island worlds, carving out meanings of islandness in diverse contexts, unpacking their roots and lamenting their loss. So many of these reflections will resonate with students of islands, engaging their minds, sparking their emotions, and ultimately demonstrating often-unsuspected commonalities within the global family of islands and their inhabitants." --Patrick D. Nunn, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia
"Rethinking Island Methodologies is the first truly indispensable island studies book of the decade. Written by three of the field's leading scholars, this volume grapples with the complexity of studying the world's immense diversity of islands and archipelagos. The authors show how that which makes island studies difficult is precisely that which makes it so compelling." --Adam Grydehøj, South China University of Technology and editor-in-chief of Island Studies Journal "For anyone who has dipped a toe in the ocean, entangled their life's skein in an island, or sought ways to think with islands--real or imaginary, large or small--this indispensable, methodological guide by leading thinkers and doers in the field will renew and inspire diverse ways of practicing island and archipelago studies. From issues of decolonization to challenges of innovation, from deep geological history to risky Anthropocene futures, the authors ask us to consider not only what we know about islands but also how we come to know islands." --Mimi Sheller, dean of The Global School, Worcester Polytechnic Institute