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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Jonathan PughORCiD
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Jonathan Pugh, Professor of Island Studies at the Department of Geography at Newcastle University, is a leading scholar in island studies. He is renowned for his critical reflections on the prominent role which islands and thinking with “islandness” is playing in the generation of different contemporary pathways of critical thought. His earlier work contributed to scholarship challenging perceptions of islands as insular, and thereby joins key concerns in archipelagic studies, by delineating a “relational turn” in island studies. Pugh’s more recent work, together with David Chandler, is interested in the role of the island in the Anthropocene, examined in his “Anthropocene Islands” project and their co-authored book Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds (2021). His latest research conceptualizes what Pugh and Chandler call “the abyssal,” a radical critique of modernity, by drawing on Caribbean and Black scholarship in their book The World as Abyss: The Caribbean and Critical Thought in the Anthropocene (2023). This interview teeters between these debates and is a result of written reflections and verbal correspondence between Jonathan Pugh and Barbara Gfoellner over several months throughout 2021 and early 2022. The final interview is an edited version of their discussion, which started off with reflections on archipelagic studies and its relevance for the Anthropocene and organically moved to Pugh’s more recent theoretical reflections on “the abyssal.”
Author(s): Gfollner B, Pugh J
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Transnational American Studies
Year: 2023
Volume: 14
Issue: 1
Pages: 303-329
Online publication date: 29/05/2023
Acceptance date: 29/05/2023
Date deposited: 29/05/2023
ISSN (electronic): 1940-0764
Publisher: University of California
URL: https://doi.org/10.5070/T814161198
DOI: 10.5070/T814161198
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