The Pacific Ocean has been exhaustively represented in utopian and exotic terms, from voluminous blue expanses of ocean to tropical beaches and palm trees, lost treasures and pirates, cannibals, and remote rainforests. In this course, we will explore these and alternative stories of this ocean. We will begin by considering the imaginative histories of islands and seawater, reading authors such as Herman Melville, Jules Verne, Barbara Baynton, and Janet Frame. We will then consider how contemporary writers imagine water and the ocean, from atomic bomb literatures to fictions of climate change. Along the way, we will explore the scholarly field of the environmental humanities and consider the importance of water for imagination and culture.