Teaching island studies: on whose terms?

Island studies can be deceptively difficult for inexperienced undergraduates due to the field’s trans-disciplinary and international scope, advanced academic content and engagement with a wide range of cognitive processes and methodologies. At the same time, island studies can potentially transform and motivate students on a personal level by tapping into their experiential knowledge when they adopt an island-centred standpoint. Such a stance is challenging to measure and not automatically or readily achieved. A teacher of island studies must therefore be sensitive to presenting and studying islands ‘on their own terms’, but realistic as to what progress can be made at an introductory level by general students. This paper draws upon the author’s experience in teaching the core introductory survey course in island studies to undergraduates at the University of Prince Edward Island from 2007 to 2009. That experience is examined in light of the dilemmas which relate to indigenous island geographies.