Time: Every other Wednesday, 12 pm
Place: East-West Center, Burns 2118
Dates:
January 17: Kuan-Hsing Chen, Literature and
Foreign Languages, National Tsing Hua University
"Club 51: The Culture of U.S. Imperialism"
Abstract
Analyzing the "Club 51" which attempts to promote the
possibility for Taiwan to be the 51st state of the U.S., this
talk addresses wider questions involved in the "culture of
U.S. imperialism" from the inside out, so as to account for
the lack of study of the effects of imperialism in the East Asia
region
January 31: Sankaran Krishna, Political
Science, UH Manoa
"In One Inning: National Identity in Diasporic
Times"
Abstract
This paper centers around the figure of a Guyanese and West
Indian crikceter named Shivnaraine Chanderpaul. Still in his
20's, Chanderpaul has established himself as one of the most
reliable batsmen in the Carribean cricket team, and one of the
premier batsmen in the world of cricket. As a cricketer of (East)
Indian origin (his ancestors moved to British Guiana in the 19th
century to work on the sugar plantations there), Chanderpaul's
identity is complicated in interesting ways. Guyana has been in
recent years wracked by ethnic tension between the Afro-Guyanese
and the Guyanese Indians. When Chanderpaul played his inaugural
test match at the Bourda Oval in the capital city of Georgetown,
the crowd at the Bourda traversed through a whole series of
identity positions in a matter of hours. Guyanese Indians were
obviously keen to see their 'boy' come good while the
Afro-Guyanese must have both wanted to see a local boy succeed
and yet possibly unable to forget the ethnic tensions that
surrounded the boundary of the cricket field. Through the figure
of Shivnaraine Chanderpaul, this paper will attempt to map the
multiple and dynamic trajectories of diasporic identity - and
suggest that our territorially bounded practices of citizenship
are too leaden-footed to match the dextrous footwork of a
Guyanese- West Indian cricketer of East Indian origin.
February 21: Jonathan Kamakawiwo'ole Osorio,
Hawaiian Studies, UH Manoa
"The Center for Hawaiian Studies: Navel Gazing and
Speaking from the Piko"
Abstract
An effective Hawaiian studies curriculum must deal with two
conflicting realities. On one hand, there is a Native perspective
that emerges from knowledge of, and pride in our own history,
arts, and sciences. On the other hand, we send our graduates
armed with this knowledge and perspective, as teachers into a
public and private school system that is largely colonial and
regards a Hawaiian-based education as alien, tourist related, or
irrelevant. Indigenous studies like our own Center's must do more
to reach and affect the thousands of children in Hawaiian
language immersion schools and the tens of thousands of Hawaiians
in the public school system. This colloquium will offer some
ideological and practical suggestions
February 28: Laura Lyons, English, UH Manoa
and Cynthia Franklin, English, UH Manoa
"Critical Appropriations: Native Resistance,
Globalization and Cultural Production in Hawai'i"
Abstract
In order to critique and counter the unproductive binary
opposition between what is often called "nativist
authenticity" and diasporic or poststructuralist forms of
identity and community, this presentation considers two projects
in Hawai'i that depend upon cultural mixings Joe Balaz's Electric
Laulau and Hapa's In the Name of Love. In our analysis
of these projects, we work to recognize the important place that
they hold within the broadly nationalist and multi-faceted
movement for sovereignty for Native Hawaiians. We are interested
how this work, as it undoes the binary opposition upon which much
hybridity theory rests, shows that the celebration of hybridity
that characterizes a great deal of postcolonial theory is itself
predicated on a reactionary and politically conservative form of
essentialism. We argue that discourses of postcolonialism are
often complicit in the erasure of indigenous cultural forms and
political struggles. Moreover, while we recognize the imperative
to account for the flows of people and cultural forms across
national borders, we at the same time argue for renewed and
closer attention in postcolonial studies to indigenous struggles
within the U.S. that challenge its geographic borders.
March 14: Mari Yoshihara, American Studies,
UH Manoa and Yujin Yaguchi, University of Tokyo, Japan
"Imagining, Consuming, and Narrating the Paradise:
Cultural Politics of Japanese Tourism in Hawai'i,
1964-1990s"
Abstract
When the restrictions on foreign travel for Japanese citizens
were liberalized in 1964, approximately 35,000 Japanese--or 27%
of total Japanese travelers abroad--visited Hawai'i. After this
year, the number of Japanese visitors to Hawai'i increased
steadily. The number of Japanese tourism in Hawai'i reached one
million in 1987, and even after Japan's economic crash of the
early 1990s Hawai'i remains by far the most popular foreign
destination for Japanese tourists. This paper traces the history
of popular Japanese discourse on Hawai'i and, more specifically,
of Japanese tourism in the islands. By looking at the persistent
as well as evolving mode of Japanese fascination with Hawai'i, we
interrogate the cultural politics of the relationship among
Japan, Hawai'i, and the continental U.S. The Japanese imaginary
and discourse on Hawai'i are founded on several common
characteristics: romanticization, feminization, and the
consumption of the tropical "paradise." While these
projections of idealized and commodified Hawai'i resemble
Euroamerican discourses about Hawai'i and the Pacific islands,
the Japanese imaginary is complicated by the context of the
triangular relations--geopolitical, socioeconomic, as well as
cultural--among Japan, the continental U.S., and Hawai'i. Two of
the major groups of actors in this triangular relations--namely,
Japanese immigrants and their descendants on the one hand and
native Hawaiians on the other--have often been conveniently
constructed, erased, or distorted in Japanese romanticization,
feminization, and consumption of Hawai'i. Through such
constructions, erasures, and distortions, Hawai'i for the
Japanese has become a "familiar Other," which fulfills
and mediates Japanese longing for the "paradise
islands." After providing an historical overview of Japanese
relations with Hawai'i, we will present a textual analysis of a
contemporary Japanese travelogue of the islands--Ikezawa
Natsuki's Hawaii Kiko - to examine the changing mode of
the Japanese imaginary in the 1990s as well as the limitations of
such a discourse
April 25: Houston Wood, English, Hawai'i Pacific University
"Navigating Cultural Studies in Oceania's Sea of
Knowledge"
Abstract
In the next few years, as cultural studies is
being transformed into yet another of the many settler-dominated
discourses institutionalized in these sea of islands, we have an
opportunity to forge a different form of cultural studies, a form
that encourages both indigenous and settler practitioners to work
with others in the region in growing effective, lived
alternatives to a continuing colonization now known as
globalization. To create such a cultural studies for Oceania will
require resisting the institutional pressures that seek to fold
cultural studies into other fields, especially into 1) Pacific
discourse studies, and/or 2) Pacific Island Studies, and/or 3)
any of several other of the various Euroamerican disciplines
(anthropology, communications, political science, sociology) and
inter-disciplines (e.g. American Studies, Gender Studies, Ethnic
Studies) that have established vested interests in "the
study of Oceania." A cultural studies in and for Oceania
will, simultaneously, resist pressures that it adopt "the
scholastic attitude" and resist, too, using strategies
developed within cultural studies manifestations on continents.
An alternative cultural studies for Oceania will, instead,
prominently embrace Oceanic theories, methods, epistemologies,
peoples, and needs. Chances for success in sustaining such a
project are not great, but the cultural studies for Oceania I
envision will be concerned less with ends than with processes,
particularly with processes that help expand Oceania's
polyrhetorical sea of knowledges.
May 1: Deane Neubauer, Globalization Research
Center, UH Manoa
"Globalization, Media and Culture"
Abstract
The dynamics of contemporary globalization are associated with
changes in the structure and nature of media that significantly
impact the creation and transmission of cultural identity,
symbols and artifacts. This talk explores some of these elements
of cultural creation and change from the perspective of the
dialectical nature of globalization processes. An analytical
scheme for studying these phenomena is suggested.
May 2: Jorge Fernandes, Political Science, UH Manoa
"Ebola Takes to the Road: Mobilizing Virus in Defense of
the Nation-State"
Abstract
This paper uses the panic that attended Colette
Mashimoseka’s arrival in Canada (for a time, Colette was
Canada’s feared first case of Ebola), as a point of
departure in an exploration of the West’s preoccupation with
the "superbug." It maintains that texts such as the
stories about Colette and films like Outbreak participate
in the construction of a "wall of disease" aimed at
shoring-up the nation-states’ borders. These texts transform
nation-states from "imagined communities" premised on
linguistic and cultural affinities to "imagined
immunities" based on notions of a shared immunity. It argues
that what is at play in narratives about Ebola, Lassa, HIV, and
their fictional equivalents is a profound anxiety about the place
of the nation-state as the locus proper of culture in the
intensified global movement of populations and cultures.