Oceanian Poetic Collaborations

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Lars Eckstein
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 496295891

The project pursues a collaborative research design that engages with new Oceanian poetry. It envisages three interrelated project streams: Project stream one seeks to redefine the ontology of postcolonial poetry by engaging with Oceanian philosophy, but also with critical interventions in Black and Indigenous studies. Its key objective is to understand how sound and resonance in poetry assemble human, non-human and more-than-human entities in Oceanian context of performance. The second stream investigates new ‘fast’ poetry that is performed and published primarily on social media. The main aim is to analyze its new political alliances in the fight against climate change and ongoing colonization. Finally, a third stream plans to establish and curate an archive of medially performed Oceanian poetry. Through introductory texts and translations, this archive shall not only facilitate transregional educational projects, but also new artistic collaborations across Oceania.Oceanian Poetic Collaborations will be conducted in close cooperation with Oceanian project partners. The core team of the project consists of the PI in Potsdam/Berlin, the designated Mercator Fellow Craig Santos Perez (Guahan/Hawai’i) and a PhD fellow whom we intend to recruit from Oceania. Project workshops shall be conducted not only in Potsdam/Berlin, but also in Hawai’i, Fiji, and French Polynesia. The project does not only intend to research collaborative (poetic) phenomena in Oceania, it also wishes to explore new, self-reflexive and non-extractive forms of academic and artistic collaboration.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5500: Collaborations: Assemblages, Articulations, Alliances