In eighteen exemplary island explorations – from factual Isla Juan Fernandez to historical Formosa and the famous Pitcairn to the fictional Pip’s Island – Roland Borgards, Lena Kugler and Mira Shah tell a story of the Pacific islands. Two themes recur throughout these Pacific Passages: On the one hand the authors provide insight into the origins of island biogeography, proposing to expand it into an island cultural biogeography; on the other hand they explore questions of temporality, the modern pluralization of time horizons that began in the 18th century, and the intertwining of geological and biological temporalities, of natural and cultural time. Their »Insularium of the Great Ocean« shares with its namesake, the baroque genre of ›Insularia‹, both the gesture of unsystematic collecting and its fundamental double perspective: on knowledge and on narrative.
Roland Borgards, born 1968, is professor of modern German Literature at Goethe University Frankfurt.
Lena Kugler, born 1974, is a Literature and Cultural Studies scholar and teaches at Frankfurt Goethe University and HU Berlin.
Mira Shah, born 1982, is a Literature and Cultural Studies scholar at Goethe University Frankfurt.
