Why do we return so often to the figure of a carceral island? From Alcatraz to Port Arthur, Nauru to Palm Island, islands continue to be imagined and represented in histories of confinement and incarceration. To what extent can we attribute this persistence to the myths and images of island carcerality that emerged through literature? How might an alternative picture of carceral islands as an archipelago change these views, redefining, in turn, an island continent, "girt by sea"?
Archipelagic Connections in Australian and Pacific Literatures is the first project of its kind to consider these questions together by remapping Australian and Pacific literature through the archipelagic connections of different islands used for confinement in convict transportation, plantation labour, Aboriginal reserves, medical quarantine, and offshore detention.
Archipelagic Connections is led by Dr. Dashiell Moore at the University of Sydney and is funded by a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award by the Australian Research Council (ARC).