American Studies- University of Hawaii, Manoa

Wonderful news! Ya-Chu (Yana) Chang, AMST PhD '23, has accepted the position of assistant professor specializing in American literature in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Taiwan University, where she will start teaching in August.

We are extremely happy and proud of Yana and are certain that she will launch an exciting scholarly career that enriches and transforms critical transpacific studies. Congratulations, Yana!

(The photos are from her graduation and post-commencement drive around island with her proud advisor in May 2023 .)

Some AMST graduate students are part of Kūkulu Pōhaku Workshop at Native Books at Arts and Letters TONIGHT, Friday, May 3, 6-8pm! Join the celebration of pōhaku and aloha for your place

Be sure to participate in "The 1898 Project Summit," an extremely important two-day summit of leading scholars and activists on American imperialism, including colleagues and alum of AMST!

See the full program here:

Summit Program | Center for Biographical Research

Come join us for AMST Movie Night! We'll eat pizza while watching Bradley Cooper's film "Maestro"! The viewing will be followed by a casual talk-story session. Students who have learned a lot about Leonard Bernstein in Professor Yoshihara's AMST 383 (Critical Research Methods) will take the lead in what promises to be a lively conversation!

Friday, April 12, 6pm
Moore Hall Rm 319 (Tokioka Room)

All are welcome. AMST majors are especially encouraged to bring non-AMST friends so that we can show off how fun our major is!

RSVP so that we can order the right amount of pizza, but walk-ins are also welcome.

Join us for the last of the Spring 2024 Colloquium jointly sponsored by Departments of American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies!

Dr. Maiko Le Lay and Dr. Ethan Caldwell will have a conversation on "Moving In-Between: How Black and Japanese Hafus Navigate Polyculturalism On and Offline."

Friday, April 12, 12:00-1:15pm
Gartley 103

Congratulations to Professor Jonna Eagle, who has been selected as the 2024 recipient of the Peter V. Garrod Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award!!! This is a wonderful recognition of the excellent work she has done in working with our graduate students.

Professor Eagle's award will be recognized at the 2024 Mānoa Awards Ceremony on May 8.

Read "Unpinning Madama Butterfly," a review essay of Boston Lyric Opera's production of Madama Butterfly, co-authored by AMST Professor Mari Yoshihara and Professor Kunio Hara of the University of South Carolina ! The production created by a team of Asian American artists audaciously re-interprets and re-envisions this canonical opera with fraught legacies and tells a powerful story of race in America.

The essay is in American Quarterly 76.1 (March 2024), available through Project MUSE at UH and many other libraries.

If you were enthralled by Gina Apostol's keynote address as the Inouye Chair, or if you unfortunately had to miss that address, you have another chance to hear her speak soon!

Gina will be in conversation with our very own Joyce Mariano in the colloquium co-sponsored by American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies on March 8, 12:00-1:15pm. Hope you will join us!

Gina Apostol, award-winning author of many novels, including _Insurrecto_, is spending the Spring 2024 semester at the UHM American Studies Department as the Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals. She will be giving her keynote address, "No Democracy Left Behind: On Novels, Nation, and Resistance" on Thursday, February 22, at 6:30pm at the Art Auditorium on UHM campus. The event is free and open to the public. Register below and join us for this special and important occasion!

Event Announcement — Gina Apostol We are pleased to announce a major public address by acclaimed novelist Gina Apostol, this semester’s Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals.

Come join us for the third presentation for the faculty search in Korean diaspora, migration, and/or transnationalism:

Young Oh Jung (ABD in History, University of California, San Diego)

"Diaspora Dignified: Histories of Cross-Racial Solidarities and Radical Struggles of Resistance in the Korean American Diaspora, 1905-1932"

Wednesday, January 31
4-5pm
Moore Hall Rm 423

Second presentation for the faculty search in Korean diaspora, migration, and/or transnationalism:

Hyo Kyung Woo (Assistant Professor of English, Edward Waters University)

"Korean Englishes and Interacting Empires through Transpacific Circulation, 1895-1945"

Friday, January 26, 4-5pm
Moore Hall Rm 423

The Department of American Studies in the midst of a search for an assistant professor specializing in Korean diaspora, migration, and/or transnationalism. Three finalists will be coming for campus visits in the next two weeks. Come join us for their job talks to learn about their work!

First up:

Mi Hyun Yoon (ABD in American Studies, Rutgers University)
"'Angry Moms': Grassroots Activism of MissyUSA Members to Reveal the Truth of the Sewol Ferry Sinking"

Wednesday, January 24, 4-5pm
Kuykendall Hall Rm 305

Congratulations to all American Studies PhDs 2023 and their mentors!!!

Some scenes from American Studies End-of-Semester Reception, December 15, 2023. Many celebrations, congratulations, reminiscing, and rejoicing on a lovely if blustery afternoon/evening at College Hill.

Maestro, Bradley Cooper's long-awaited film about Leonard Bernstein's complex relationship with his wife Felicia, opens at Kahala Consolidated Theatres tonight (12/7) before it starts streaming on Netflix on December 20. If you'd like to join Professor Yoshihara (the author of _Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro_), go to the theater on Friday 12/8 at 7:20pm!

Watch Maestro | Netflix Official Site This fearless love story chronicles the complicated lifelong relationship between music legend Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.

SIX students in American Studies have defended their dissertations this semester and will be officially receiving their doctorates in December!!! Congratulations to all these new PhDs for completing the long and arduous journey!!!

Here are their dissertation titles and some photos from their defenses (sorry we do not have pics for all of them):

Keiko Fukunishi: "Contradictions of American Empire: Power and Resistance in Turn of the Twentieth Century American Visual Culture"

Katherine Achacoso: "(Under)mining Canadian Empire: Towards Dangerously (Re)membering Diasporic Surigaonon Stories of Rocks, Land, and People that Move"

Jo Ann Sakaguchi: "From Site of Internment to Sites of Conscience: Representing Honouliuli's Prisoners of War and Civilian Internment Camp"

Taylor Wray: "Politics of Expression: The Contemporary Native Hawaiian Visual Art Movement"

Guoqian Li: "The Reception of African American Literature and African American Studies in China from 1933-1977: Contacts, Translation, and Literary Internationalism"

Eriko Oga: "Hawa'i in Japanese Tourist Imaginary: Wedding, Hula, and Power Spots"

FINDING DOHI, a film by Amber McClure, a current student in AMST PhD program and Museum Studies Graduate Certificate Program, will be screening TOMORROW, Thursday, October 26, from 6-7:30pm at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i (along with another film INHERITANCE by Erin Lau). The film will be preceded by a special performance by Kanaka ʻŌiwi poet Inalihi and will be followed by Q&A with directors. Join us to watch the film and chat with Amber!

Safe Falling Presentation by Kupuna Aikido - Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii We are updating our Koseki and Translation Services program. New requests will not be accepted until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Join us for this extremely important, timely discussion on Friday, October 27: Cultural Studies in the Contemporary World. The panel discussion is moderated by Professor Mari Yoshihara and the panelists include our very own Professor Jonna Eagle.

Check out Professor Elizabeth Colwill's newly published article, "Creole Against Creolization," in the journal _Theory & Event_!

The article can be downloaded through UH library:

Creole Against Creolization - University of Hawaii at Mānoa The meanings of "creole" and "creolization" metamorphose as they traverse centuries, oceans and archipelagos, muddying theoretical waters. Whose interests are served, and what forms of relationality forged, in deployments of "creole" and "creolization"? What is the relationship of creolization to an...

A few shots from AMST/ES/WGSS Colloquium on October 6, where Professor Brandy Nālani McDougall gave a beautiful and powerful reading from her new book of poetry, _ʻĀina Hānau: Birthland_.

Congratulations to Joseph Stanton, Emeritus Professor of American Studies, on his new collection of art-inspired poetry, _Lifelines: Poems for Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper_!

Lifelines, by Joseph Stanton Joseph Stanton, author of this impressive collection of poems, is a masterful practitioner of art-inspired poetry. His commitment to the ekphrastic genre is evident in Lifelines: Poems for Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper, his eighth collection of poems. The chronological presentation of poems inspir...

Come join this important conversation on the long history of Polynesia and its lessons for navigating the climate crisis. Thursday, October 12, 6:30pm at Outrigger Reef Waikiki Beach Resort, Diamond Head Ballroom. Free and open to the public. Registration link in the comment box below.

You've read Professor Jonna Eagle's article and want to learn more? You have taken her class, loved it, and want to study more with her? You can do so in Spring 2024--in London, UK!!! You can gain invaluable international experience AND earn American Studies credits through the Study Abroad program. Check out this amazing opportunity!

Professor Jonna Eagle's latest article, "Backwards into the Future: Melodramatic Affect and the Vicissitudes of Time in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017)," has just been published in the Journal of War & Culture Studies. You can read this important and timely work online and now in print!

Backwards into the Future: Melodramatic Affect and the Vicissitudes of Time in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017) This article interrogates the reworking of melodramatic form in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017), exploring how the film’s innovative structures are founded upon—and draw us toward —familiar orie...

Francesca Royster's reading from _Listening for My Mother: Travels in Music from Chicago to Bahia_ hosted by Words@Mānoa on October 5 will certainly be of great interest to American Studies scholars and students!

Congratulations to Leanne Trapedo Sims, AMST PhD, for the publication of her book, _Reckoning with Restorative Justice: Hawai'i Women's Prison Writing_, from Duke University Press!

The book explores the experiences of women who are incarcerated at the Women's Community Correctional Center, the only women's prison in the state of Hawai'i, and focuses particularly on their participation in the Kailua Prison Writing and Prison Monologues program. Blending ethnography, literary studies, psychological analysis, and criminal justice critique, the book is a model of American Studies scholarship that centers Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women's voices and sheds light on the state of the prison-industrial complex.

Duke University Press - Reckoning with Restorative Justice SubjectsGender and Sexuality > Feminism and Women’s Studies, American Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies In Reckoning with Restorative Justice, Leanne Trapedo Sims explores the experiences of women who are incarcerated at the Women’s Community Correctional Center, the only women’s prison in the ...

AMST Professor and Hawaiʻi State Poet Laureate Brandy Nālani McDougall will be reading her poetry as part of Hawaiʻi Symphony Orchestraʻs season opening concert on Sunday, October 8! Her poetry reading will accompany the world premiere of Michael-Thomas Foumaiʻs composition Children of Gods. So exciting!

The concert will also feature the Hawaiʻi premiere of Missy Mazzoliʻs Violin Concerto "Procession" and a brilliant performance of Rimsky-Korsakovʻs dramatic symphony Scheherazade.

Come and enjoy the music and the words with us! More information in the comment section below.

Professor Mari Yoshiharaʻs new book, just released in Japan, is a sort-of-but-not-quite bilingual memoir about living in two languages and cultures. The English title (which does not correspond with the Japanese title) is "What I Write About When I Write (Mostly) in Japanese." If you read Japanese, check it out! If you have friends and family who read Japanese, tell them to read it!

Check out the fresh-off-the-press special issue of American Quarterly, "The Body Issue: Sports and the Politics of Embodiment," which features exciting new scholarship on sports and the body and their intersections with race, gender, sexuality, nation, and empire!

Join us on Friday, October 6 for the AMST/ES/WGSS Colloquium featuring AMST Professor and Hawaiʻi State Poet Laureate Brandy Nālanai McDougall, who will read from and speak about her most recent book of poetry, ʻĀina Hānau: Birthland.