conference

Empires in Motion: Colonial Diasporas & Cultural Production in the Shadow of the Japanese Empire

organized by the Empire Studies Initiative and Zainichi Literary Studies Consortium

Empires in Motion is a 3-day conference taking place at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa from March 21-23rd. Through panels, screenings, poetry readings, and workshops, the event will explore the literary and cultural production of diasporic populations displaced across the Asia-Pacific by the Japanese colonial empire and postcolonial Cold War structures, with special attention to the legacies of Korea-Japan entanglements. Please join a group of visiting scholars and artists for this series of events, including a keynote and reading by zainichi Korean poet Zhong Zhang (3/21), a discussion of the comfort women controversy with screening of the documentary Shusenjo (3/22), panels on the cultures of colonial migration and zainichi Korean fiction and film (3/21, 3/23), and a special conversation with Soo Hugh, showrunner of the upcoming Apple TV+ series Pachinko (3/22).
 
Register today at empiresinmotion.com

zoom talk

Netherlands New Guinea, 1949-1962: A Civilizing Mission in the Era of Decolonization

Co-organized by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Center for Pacific Islands Studies
 
Monday, March 21, 12 - 1 pm
 
Although the “standard of civilization” had largely fallen out of favor in the postwar period, conceptions of “civilization” colored political campaigns regarding West Papua, or the Netherlands New Guinea (NNG), as the Dutch then referred to it, particularly in its efforts to retain the territory following the independence of Indonesia.  This talk presents the Netherlands’ evolving “civilizing mission” and its campaigns to gain international support for its continued possession of the NNG after 1949.  The talk refers to Dutch sources from the period that address its efforts to colonize the territory against the prevailing trend of decolonization, and how this undermined West Papua’s prospects for self-determination.
 
Registration: https://hawaii.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AgG-Go9aSwuGL2e6Ad44Bw
More info: https://www.cseashawaii.org/events/netherlands-new-guinea-1949-1962-a-civilizing-mission-in-the-era-of-decolonization-external-inbox/

zoom panel (Part of the Southeast Asia in Transition 2022 Webinar Series)

The Changing Lives of Southeast Asian Rivers

Co-organized by Center for Southeast Asian Studies, and Center pf Chinese Studies, the East-West Center, Michigan State University-James Madison College and Asian Studies Center, and Chiang Mai University-Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development

Tuesday, March 22, 2 - 3:30 pm 

Panelists
Anthony D. Medrano, Presidential Young Professor, Yale-NUS College
Rita Padawangi, Senior Lecturer, Singapore University of Social Sciences
Keith Barney, Associate Professor, Australian National University
Ming-Li Yong, Fellow, East-West Center
Moderator: Jefferson M. Fox, Director of Research, East-West Center

Registration: https://eastwestcenter.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kQgBeEr0TFeE1TcZpPRHfA
More info: https://www.cseashawaii.org/events/changing-lives-of-southeast-asian-rivers/

in-person event (Biweekly Chinese Corner)

organized by the Chinese Language Flagship Program in collaboration with the Center for Chinese Studies

Tuesday, March 22, 3 – 4 pm

Moore Hall 120
 
Chinese Flagship continues to welcome members of our UHM Chinese language learning community to join our biweekly Chinese Corners, held in collaboration with the Center for Chinese Studies. This has been opened up to not just UHM CHN and Chinese Flagship students of all levels but to the general public as well. We welcome all of our students to come to practice speaking Chinese while also helping promote Chinese language learning beyond our Manoa campus! Participants join us to practice with fellow participants at similar levels. Our UH Chinese Flagship student ambassadors along with several native-speaking UH instructors as well as other Flagship program staff members will be there to share and engage with participants in Chinese. You should be sure to ask your individual CHN instructors regarding possible extra credit for attending. 
 
Registration is required: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdfU-_DgJJQOTtPPQJ60iItPdS3ozpl4q7I9oVAyrbFi6ATzQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

zoom event

Hoʻokaiāulu is a speaker series focused on the Public Humanities in the Pacific

Co-sponsored by the Mānoa Center for the Humanities and Civic Engagement and the Mellon/ACLS Scholars and Society Fellowship.
 
Wednesday, March 23, 10:30 am

Kelsey Amos is the Co-Founder and COO of Purple Maiʻa Foundation. She is a writer, non-profit professional, and entrepreneur. She has a PhD in English from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and is co-founder and COO of Purple Maiʻa Foundation. Kelsey grew up in Waipiʻo Uka and currently lives in Nuʻuanu with her partner, Jordan, and son, Marco. Her ancestors came from Japan, the British Isles, and France.
 
Register in advance: https://hawaii.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lDsRUzL7S8O8YrzM32goVQ

zoom event

Dialogue with Jairus Grove and Nandita Sharma on "Putin, War, and Peace"

organized by the International Cultural Studies Program
 
Wednesday, March 23, 12 – 1:15 pm
 
Jairus Victor Grove is the director of the Hawai'i Research Center for Futures Studies and Associate Professor of International Relations at The University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. His research focuses on martial theory and technologies of war. He is an editor at Security Dialogue and his book Savage Ecology: War and Geopolitics at the End of the World is available on Duke University Press. 
 
Nandita Sharma is Professor in Sociology at UHM and Director of the ICSGCP. Her research interests address human migration, migrant labor, nation-state power, ideologies of racism, sexism, and nationalism, processes of identification and self-understanding, and social movements for justice. Her most recent book is: Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020). 
 
Registration: https://hawaii.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_w0v1-cBiTvqJOmoMuAG9HQ

zoom talk

Revealing the Works of the “Cosmic Dancer”: Access to the Digitized Mitsuo Aoki Collections

 
Wednesday, March 23, 12 – 1 pm
 
Learn about the Mitsuo Aoki Collections and the work to preserve and make them accessible to the public. Demonstrations on how to access the digitized written papers of unpublished talks, sermons, articles, lectures and yet unseen videos of Rev. Aoki through the on-line portals of the University Archives of UH Mānoa and ʻUluʻulu: The Henry Kuʻualoha Giugni Moving Image Archive of Hawaiʻi, UH-West O‘ahu.

Theologian, minister, college professor and founder of the UH Department of Religion for over sixty years the Rev. Dr. Aoki counseled and taught others how to experience death not merely as an end, but as a vital, inseparable part of life. A Living Treasure of Hawaiʻi, Aoki was instrumental in establishing Hospice Hawaiʻi and received their Lifetime Achievement Award and the national Jefferson Award for his exemplary career of religious and academic leadership and volunteer services to those experiencing terminal illness. 

Zoom RSVP

talk

Cambodia and the Maritime World in the Post-Angkorian Period (14th-18th Centuries)

co-organized by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and Department of History

Speaker: Nhim Sotheavin (Researcher and Lecturer, Sophia University) 
 
Wednesday, March 23, 2 – 3 pm
Location: Agricultural Science 220 and on Zoom (hybrid)

The 15th to 19th century Cambodia is often referred to as the “Dark Age” owing largely to the paucity of documents and the collapse of Angkor political power followed by the steady decline of Cambodia. This talk uses East Asian documents relative to Cambodia, and recent archaeological research in Angkor and post-Angkorian capitals to illustrate that Cambodia remained a power player in the South China Sea through the 17th -18th centuries. This talk outlines a brief historical timeline and sources relative to the post-Angkorian Cambodia and recent archeological findings from decade of collaborative research at the Banteay Kdei Temple (Angkor) and the post-Angkorian capital of Oudong (Phnom Penh).
 
Register: https://hawaii.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_5ER5ElnzT8yLIoHDhkK3Dg
More info: https://www.cseashawaii.org/events/cambodia-and-the-maritime-world-in-the-post-angkorian-period-14th-18th-centuries/

talk

The contested production of property: State land and plantations in Laos

Co-organized by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Department of Geography and Environment, and Political Ecology Working Group

Speaker: Miles Kenney-Lazar (Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore)
 
Thursday, March 24, 12 – 1 pm
Location: Saunders 443 and on Zoom (hybrid)
 
This talk examines the property systems that underlie plantation expansion in Laos, which is linked to global processes of land grabbing. It focuses on the category of “state land”, which must be produced and carved out of a broader landscape, a process that is highly contested by rural communities. The talk is based upon long-term ethnographic research in southern Laos.
 
Zoom: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/97698324908 (Passcode: Lecture)
More info: https://www.cseashawaii.org/events/the-contested-production-of-property-state-land-and-plantations-in-laos/

brown bag Biography talk

Indigenizing the Writing Center” with Georganne Nordstrom, Kalilinoe Detwiler, and Kayla Watabu

organized by the Center for Biographical Research

Thursday, March 24, 12 - 1:15 pm
 
In this presentation, three writing center practitioners from the UHM Writing Center will engage the question: How can the writing center serve our students by participating in the re-centering of sovereignty and decolonization of educational institutions?
 
Zoom: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/95496570215
Meeting ID: 954 9657 0215
Password: 975259

zoom colloquium

Ephemeral Life Writing as Resistance

organized by the Department of English
 
Thursday, March 24, 3 – 4:30 pm
 
Professor Beth Yahp (University of Sydney) presents new work from her project Small Pleasures on life writing as resistance to economic rationalism and weaponized discourses of health and well-being.
 
Zoom: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/93959194850?pwd=SjF3MVduVVJQejd3VnEzZ1FobmN4Zz09
Meeting ID: 939 5919 4850
Passcode: 236190

zoom forum

Never Forget: Remembering the Armenian Genocide 107 Years Later

organized by the Department of History
 
Thursday, March 24, 4 pm
 
Annika Topelian, PhD Candidate in the UHM Department of Linguistics, will discuss the events leading up to the Armenian Genocide, the catastrophe itself, and some of the many legacies and impacts for the survivors and their descendants. What does it now mean to officially recognize these massacres as "Genocide?"
 
Please contact Prof. Peter H Hoffenber at peterh@hawaii.edu for the Zoom link

in-person lecture

Defending Home: How to Protect Renters and Fight Poverty beyond the Pandemic

Co-sponsors: College of Social Sciences, Kahala Hotel and Resort, Scholars Strategy Network, William S. Richardson School of Law, and UH Alumni Relations
 
Thursday, March 24, 6:30 pm
Orvis Auditorium
 
Matthew Desmond is the author of four books, including Evicted, which won the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award. An expert on inequality, housing, and public policy, he is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a MacArthur “Genius” fellow. Desmond directs The Eviction Lab, which tracks housing and eviction patterns in cities across the country.
 
Register HERE. Note that all attendees must show proof of vaccination against Covid-19.

live in-person Dance performance
organized by the Kennedy Theatre and the Department of Theatre + Dance
 

Co-Motion: BLUE
 

Friday, March 25, 2 pm & 7:30 pm*
Saturday, March 26, 2 pm

*Post-show Rap (Q&A) follows the 7:30 pm performance
Concert Directors Betsy Fisher & Lorenzo Perillo
 
Featuring original choreography by: Kayla Eisenberg (BFA Sr. Project), Greta Pearse (MFA thesis), Dulcinea Sabin (BFA Sr. Project), Erika Sanchez (MFA thesis), and Katelyn Wyatt (MFA thesis). Two completely different dance concerts showcase the culmination of years of study and sweat by students in the Dance program. Co-Motion: Blue and Co-Motion: Green feature exemplary undergraduate and graduate student choreography as well as graduating BFA and MFA students’ culminating works in a variety of dance styles.
 

Co-Motion: GREEN

 
Saturday, March 26, 7:30 pm*
Sunday, March 27, 2 pm & 7:30 pm

*Post-show Rap (Q&A) follows the 7:30 pm performance
Concert Directors Betsy Fisher & Lorenzo Perillo
 
Featuring original choreography by: Holly Chung (MFA thesis), Carla Guajardo (MFA thesis), and Christianne Moss (BFA Sr. Project). Two completely different dance concerts showcase the culmination of years of study and sweat by students in the Dance program. Co-Motion: Blue and Co-Motion: Green feature exemplary undergraduate and graduate student choreography as well as graduating BFA and MFA students’ culminating works in a variety of dance styles.
 
ADVISORY: Patrons ages 5 and up must show proof of completed COVID19 vaccination and comply with all UHM and Kennedy Theatre COVID19 prevention protocols including but not limited to wearing a CDC approved mask over the nose and mouth at all times inside Kennedy Theatre.
 
For more info and link to purchase tickets: http://manoa.hawaii.edu/liveonstage/comotion/

zoom event

How To Be A Filmmaker: Panel Discussion and Q&A

Sponsored by Words@Mānoa, the Department of English, and the Academy for Creative Media
 
Tuesday, March 29, 12 – 1 pm
 
Interested in entering the world of filmmaking? Curious about how to write screenplays and direct films? Join us for a panel discussion and Q&A with filmmakers Andrew Ahn (Spa Night), Brooke Pepion Swaney (Daughter of a Lost Bird), Christopher Kahunahana (Waikīkī: The Film) and Kimi Takesue (95 and 6 To Go) who will talk about how they got their starts in film, little known opportunities in the industry, and the craft of writing, directing, and producing movies. 
 
Zoom: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/97310665584
Meeting ID: 973 1066 5584
Passcode: 094812
 

zoom webinar (faculty roundtable)

The Effects of Covid-19 on Public Health in Contemporary China: Perspectives from History and Anthropology

organized by the Center for Chinese Studies
 
Wednesday, March 30, 1 - 2:30 pm

• Nicole Barnes, Assistant Professor of History at Duke University

• Katherine Mason, Vartan Gregorian Assistant Professor of Anthropology & Director of Undergraduate Research and Community Engagement for Anthropology at Brown University

• Miriam Gross, Associate Professor of History and International & Area Studies, University of Oklahoma

This roundtable conversation focuses on considering the pandemic from a variety of perspectives: administrative preparedness, enhanced social controls, socioeconomic impacts, gender roles, community relations, grassroots organizing, state-society relations, human-animal relations, zoonotic transfer, vaccine development and delivery, etc. This lively and interactive conversation aims to engage questions and contributions from the audience.
 
Zoom: https://hawaii.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__gU3N6ewR0iDHJo1oOZJOQ
More Info https://manoa.hawaii.edu/chinesestudies/category/upcoming/

zoom talk

Intimacy Direction for Theatre/TV/Film with Claire Warden: “Intimacy Direction: Moving Towards a Theatre of Empowerment”

organized by the Department of Theatre and Dance

Saturday, April 2, 1 pm

Claire Warden of Intimacy Directors and Coordinators will speak about best practices in intimacy safety for theatre, television, and film. Warden will introduce the concept of Intimacy Direction, a growing artistic practice to promote psychological and physical safety in the performing arts. Warden is one of the most respected practitioners in the field of Intimacy Direction. Warden consults for and intimacy coordinates on television networks, such HBO and Hulu, as well as independent films. In 2019, she made history as the first intimacy director in a Broadway production for Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. She was also the first woman to be nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Intimacy and Fight Direction, which she won for Slave Play in 2019. Other recent Broadway credits include The Inheritance, Jagged Little Pill, and Company. 

Questions? Lurana O’Malley omalley@hawaii.edu
More Info https://manoa.hawaii.edu/liveonstage/webinarcw/

Register go.hawaii.edu/xxy     

zoom talk

Japan's Sweet Manifest Destiny: Sugar, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific with Vicky Shen, PhD candidate, University of Pittsburgh

organized by the Department of History
 
Thursday, April 7, 4 pm
 
Vicky Shen will discuss her dissertation project exploring Japanese expansion into the Asia-Pacific through its sugar industry. The talk will consider the technological and biological transfers among Japan, the U S, and the Territory of Hawai'i, which were indispensable in building an industrialized sugar industry. What were the relationships among the Japanese imperial state and both ecologies and peoples in the Pacific?
 
Contact Peter H Hoffenberg at peterh@hawai.edu for the Zoom link
 

zoom talk

The Lost Valley of the Crescent Moon: 30 years of research in Petra

sponsored by Archaeological Institute of America and UHM Sidney Stern Foundation   
 
Thursday, April 7, 7 pm
 
In a visually stunning presentation, Professor Thomas Paradise (University of Arkansas) will discuss his thirty years of research in the magical ruined city of Petra, Jordan. Coming from a diverse background in geology, materials conservation, climatology, and architecture, Paradise will address his work in the Valley of Petra since 1990 discussing the melding of the geosciences, cultural heritage management, history, architecture, and politics that have driven his research.  From understanding deterioration of 2,000-year-old sandstone structures, effects of tourism at this UNESCO site, to new findings on architectural alignments to the Sun, many answers to haunting questions regarding Petra will be examined.  Professor has been involved with the writing and filming of eight (8) international TV specials (i.e. NatGeo, Smithsonian, Discovery, PBS Nova) on Petra as well and will discuss his research in these television specials.
 
Zoom: https://HAWAII.ZOOM.US/J/97481890495
Meeting ID: 974 8189 0495
Image name: Petra Archaeology.png
 
Hold the date for in-person events:
April 27, Nicholas Warner, CAIRO "Conserving Cairo 1882-2022"  
April 28, Salima Ikram:  Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt

art exhibition

Sadaf Naeem: Threads of Empathy, Knotting the Unseen

organized by the Department of Art & Art History
 

Commons Gallery, Art Building
Sunday – Thursday, 12 – 4 pm

Sunday, March 20 – Thursday, March 31

MFA Thesis Defense - Wednesday, March 30, 1:30 – 3 pm, Zoom link (TBA)

Threads of Empathy, Knotting the Unseen, by Sadaf Naeem, makes visible the connection between physical labor and women’s unseen emotional work. Utilizing cotton cords made by women in Punjab, Pakistan, she practices an intensive method of knotting and braiding that emerges from everyday acts like making hair braids or tying a knot to get dressed. The installation consists of three components entitled Knotted Bodies, Braided Body, and Unfolded. Together, they are a confrontation of childhood memories and a metaphor for healing.

Upcoming 2022 Master of Fine Arts Degree Candidate Exhibitions

Makenzie Davis: Sunday, April 3 – Thursday, April 14
Nathan Talamantez : Sunday, April 17 – Thursday, April 28 

MORE

art exhibition

Ken Okiishi: A Model Childhood

organized by the Department of Art & Art History 

The Art Gallery, Art Building [map]
through April 10, 2022 
Gallery Hours: Sunday – Thursday 12 – 4pm

The exhibition focuses on ruptures and paradigm shifts that destroy not only continuity in living one’s life, but the ability to think in coherent streams of thought, and conjectures that these modes of dis-formation are important central dis-organizing principles of writing American history. In A Model Childhood, Okiishi approaches history through the lens of family and oral history, bringing both an intimacy and complexity to official narratives of the time period. Immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Okiishi’s grandfather, following a frantic phone call from his brother, whose house had just been searched by the Honolulu police looking for connections to Japan, decided to suddenly unload all traces of the family’s Japanese possessions by dumping them into Māmala Bay. This leitmotif of American identity formation haunts what ensues. MORE

art exhibition

The Haiku as Visual Form: A Stanton Macdonald-Wright’s Haiga Portfolio 

organized by the Department of Art & Art History 

John Young Museum of Art, Krauss Hall [map]
January 24 – May 8
Sunday – Thursday, 12 – 4 pm

In 1966¬1967, the American artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright created the Haiga Portfolio, while working in Kyoto, Japan. The series of experimental prints offer visual interpretations of haiku by seven Japanese poets including Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. Macdonald-Wright felt the immediacy of the haiku poem could serve as a model for the abstract painting he was interested in developing: It was a form that could quickly get to an essential truth while omitting extraneous detail. In the 20 colorful, quasi-abstract woodblock prints we see Macdonald-Wright revisiting the early 20th century European ideal of making visible relationships between color, abstraction and feeling. The result is a visually spectacular proto-psychedelic series testing the relationship between words and images. MORE