Introduction - Refiguring Indian Ocean Epistemological Cartographies Critical Ocean Studies Oral Sources Chapter Outlines Chapter 1 - Historical Sources and the Writing of Fiction in Valerie Cuthbert's The Great Siege of Fort Jesus History and Fiction; History as Narrative Portuguese Historiography of the Indian Ocean World Portuguese-Oriented Histories of the Kenyan Coast: Cuthbert's Sources Reproduction of the Colonial Archive: Imported biases in Cuthbert's novel Chapter 2 - Subverting Eurocentric Histories of the Swahili Coast in the 19th Century Distanced Affinities and Proximate Tensions: Oral and biographical reflections on Rebmann Humanizing the Demonized: Subverting Eurocentric histories of the Swahili coast Chapter 3 - Re-figuring the Colonial Archive: Oral Historiographies of Fort Jesus in Mombasa Fort Jesus, a Portuguese Fortress: The official oral history of Fort Jesus Ngomeni, not Fort Jesus: A Digo home, not a Portuguese fortress Of Disruptions and Erasures: A comparative reading of the oral histories of Fort Jesus Chapter 4 - From Surface to Depth: Material and Multidimensional Perspectives of the Indian Ocean Lateral Connections and the Economic Dimension of the Sea Underwater Perspectives and the Spiritual Dimension of the Sea Chapter 5 - A Dead and Dying Sea: The Ecological Dimension of the Indian Ocean on the Kenyan Coast Summoning Local Art Forms: Ecological functions of Swahili oral poetry Generation Eyewitnesses: Fishers' articulation of a dead and dying sea Chapter 6 - A Biography of the Indian Ocean: Tracing alternative sea maps in Yvonne Owuor's The Dragonfly Sea Sensuous Maps of the Indian Ocean Owuor's Ecocritical and Political Project in The Dragonfly Conclusion - Notes on Expaning Epistemic Territories References.