‘Few of us who work in departments of English at colleges or universities in the United States have the opportunity to teach New Zealand Maori or Australian Aboriginal literatures in a stand-alone course. Instead, we include these texts in broader literary designations: global, comparative, postcolonial, Indigenous. I teach an upper-division undergraduate course with the general title Special Topics in World Literature once a year, alternating offerings between global Indigenous literatures and literatures of Oceania. My students, predominantly Americans who attend a large university in the Midwest, usually enter these courses unfamiliar with the geographies, histories, demographics, and contemporary cultural and political situations of either Aotearoa / New Zealand or Australia, and unfamiliar with either body of literature. Only a few arrive with a prior interest in Indigenous peoples; most register to fulfill a diversity requirement or to meet a world literature prerequisite for a master's program in English secondary education.’ (Introduction)