CLACS Podcast: Island Territories

Island Territories: Unpacking U.S. Colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific explores the relationship between the mainland US and its territories of Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, in the Caribbean, and in the Pacific, Guåhan (Guam) and American Samoa. Through interviews with scholars from the islands, we aim to answer questions about the history of the colonial relationship, identity, politics, and the economy, while shining a light on their most present challenges and addressing questions about their futures in the 21st Century.

Listen to all episodes online here.

With additional support from NYU’s: Asia/Pacific/American Institute and the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Executive producer, researcher and host: Omar Dauhajre

Script by: Paola Villa and Mitzi Hernández.

Sound design and post-production: Giovanni Escalera

Production Consultant: Julio Ortiz Luquis

Produced by: Sonidorama

In our first episode, we’ll look at the history and current affairs of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in the context of its relationship with the mainland US.

Guest: Ángel Collado-Schwarz has been visiting professor of history at Columbia, Yale, and NYU, and has taught at the University of Puerto Rico Law School and the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe. He earned a PhD in Contemporary Latin American History at Universidad Complutense in Madrid, and was communications advisor to former Puerto Rico Governor Rafael Hernández Colón (1985-1992). He’s the founder of Fundación Voz del Centro, which transmits an oral history weekly radio program in Puerto Rico and New York since 2002, and his most recent books are Truman y Puerto Rico: el origen de un proyecto descolonizador fallido (2019) and Eisenhower y el Caribe: Muñoz Marín, Castro y Trujillo (2021). 

The reading list for this episode can be found here.

Listen here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/clientesnecios/ep1-puerto-rico-sb

US Virgin Islands: In our second episode, we focus on the US Virgin Islands and the pressing political, environmental, and identity issues shaping the conversation around self-determination and sovereignty.

Guest: Hadiya Sewer is a Research Fellow in the African and African American Studies Program at Stanford University and a Visiting Scholar in the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. They are currently working on two monographs titled “(De)Colonial Desires: Blackness, Aporia, and the Afterlives of the Dead” and "Meditations on Disaster: Climate Injustice, Covid-19, and the Coloniality of Power." Sewer is also the President and Co-Founder of St.JanCo: the St. John Heritage Collective.

The reading list for this episode can be found here.

Listen here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/clientesnecios/ep2-virgin-islands-sb

In this episode, we'll be talking about the westernmost US territory. Located in the Oceania region in the Pacific, Guam, or as it’s known in the Chamorro language, Guåhan, we dive into issues of representation, cultural preservation, and resiliency.

Guest: Keith L. Camacho is a professor of Asian American Studies and a faculty affiliate with the American Indian Studies Center and the Center for Community Engagement at the University of California Los Angeles. He is also the author of Sacred Men: Law, Torture, and Retribution in Guam (Duke University Press, 2019), the editor of Reppin’: Pacific Islander Youth and Native Justice (University of Washington Press, 2021), and the former senior editor of Amerasia Journal.

The reading list for this episode can be found here.

Listen here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/clientesnecios/ep3-guam-sb

American Samoa: In our fourth episode we'll be talking about American Samoa. Forming part of Polynesia and the region of Oceania, the southernmost territory has a unique arrangement with the US compared with other territories.

Guest: Luafata (Fata) Simanu-Klutz is an Associate Professor (retired) at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa’s department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures, where she taught Samoan language, literature, and history, particularly traditional Samoan literature, Samoan women writers, the works of Albert Wendt and other modern Pacific island writers. She was also affiliate faculty for the Center for Pacific Islands Studies (CPIS) and a member of the Manoa Faculty Senate, and the Hawaii, Asian, and Pacific (HAP) Systemwide Board.

The reading list for this episode can be found here.

Listen here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/clientesnecios/ep4-samoa-sb