Moving Islands

Reviews / Votes

Finalist: Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) 2022 Outstanding Book Award * ATHE Outstanding Book Award * Finalist: American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) 2022 Barnard Hewitt Book Award * ASTR Barnard Hewitt Book Award * "A rare model of rigorous, original and highly accomplished scholarship. The book's canvas is vast, in the number and variety of artistic works examined, in historical depth and, above all, in geographical reach. Looser has managed to extend our understanding of postcolonial and intercultural performance and at the same time shift current paradigms in how comparative, interdisciplinary analyses of embodied arts praxis might be executed across different scales." -- Helen Gilbert, Royal Holloway, University of London "A volume of Oceanic scope and vision . . . Moving Islands is a rich and vibrant book, alive with the urgency and inventiveness of the artwork it examines. It puts the Pacific region on the map of Performance/Theatre Studies, demanding that the discipline reconceive how it understands the relationships between place, culture, people, and performance." -- Margaret Werry, University of Minnesota "Looser makes a compelling case for how Oceanic performance reflects and shapes the concerns of the twenty-first century, a "Pacific Century," where "some of the world's most significant political, economic, and environmental issues are being forged and tested" (274)." -- Modern Drama "Moving Islands creates a needed paradigm shift in theatre and performance studies. It is imperative for theatre and performance scholars of all backgrounds to familiarize themselves with Looser's work; it offers the foundation of a new field of study and has the potential to serve as a catalyst for change in how theatre and performance studies are taught." -- Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism "Moving Islands is a monumental achievement, a discipline-defining project of vast intellectual scope which adds considerably to knowledge and theories about Oceanic theatre and performance." -- Australasian Drama Studies "Infused with Pasifika worldviews and stories of exchange, Moving Islands explores the contemporary Pasifika moment, spanning a range of examples from transpacific voyaging to militarisation and nuclear testing...Moving Islands will be a linchpin text for scholars, students and artists with an interest in how the Pacific defines itself and, indeed, world futures in and through performance in this 'Pacific Century.' -- Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies "The Global Pacific occupies manifold Transpasifika water, land, spiritual, philosophical, and performance terrains, and Looser's closer interest in the sophisticated reworking of mid-century tropes towards something more global and simultaneously decolonized is crucial in addressing and challenging systemic forms of inequality and discrimination." -- Literary Research "Diana Looser's Moving Islands: Contemporary Performance and the Global Pacific is an impressive book. It joins an exciting of interdisciplinary scholarship that moves beyond the geographic and conceptual boundaries of area studies in order to provide global perspectives of mobility and the exchange of ideas, commodities, and, in this instance, contemporary performance from Oceania." -- The Contemporary Pacific