M.A. - American Studies

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/587

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Taking their turn: Cofa migration, localism and diasporic discourse
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2025) Packer, Malia Ann; McDougall, Brandy Nālani; American Studies
Critique of how Hawai‘i’s renowned multiculturalism seems to still entertain racism and support U.S. nationalism in the form of anti-migrant sentiment has been introduced and discussed by senior scholars. I theorize that the through-line of Othering in Hawai‘i’ s society is not simply a factor of time lived in this space, nor migrant ability to assimilate. These elements often used to explain why some groups ‘make it’ in Hawai‘i while others have not, overshadow the structural machinations of American Empire that benefit from maintaining a competitive, pyramidal social organization unique to Hawai‘i. With this thesis, I chart a process with its roots in settler militarization and American Pacificism, that led to diasporic societal hierarchization using race, nationality and class, and resulted in modern, liberal multiculturism which uses culture and nationality to maintain perceptions of inferiority. A primary goal of this thesis is to add to the discourse on belonging and identity development in Hawai‘i by emphasizing that Micronesian experiences are being overlooked as an important part of this historical process. Another main goal is to deconstruct the sociocultural category of Local as both a barrier to and key for belonging, theorizing Local not within its usual myriads of descriptions, but rather as a tool, which can be used to strengthen American hierarchical structures. This thesis is divided into three sections, each section taking a critical approach to the colloquialism “taking their turn”: a prevalent, dismissive explanation of anti-migrant discrimination as part and parcel with diaspora to Hawai‘i.
Sugar Schools: Cultivating the American Experiment in Territorial Hawaiʻi 1919-1934
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) McConnell, Matthew J.; Kahanu, Noelle M.K.Y.; American Studies
Public school programming in interwar, territorial Hawaiʻi sits exactly at the confluence of major historical trends in the science of eugenics, progressive education, and the struggle of Anglo-American colonizers to maintain political and economic power. Together the following three forces; race science, colonial pedagogies, and the agricultural industry developed an intimate though often fraught relationship that nonetheless functioned cooperatively to subordinate a non-White multi-racial majority population to White minority rule. This system, henceforth called the Agro-Educational Complex of Territorial Hawaiʻi, was the single most powerful social engineering entity in the islands from the late 19th to mid-20th century. Their project came to fruition from 1919 to 1934 under the guidance of three successive superintendents of the Department of Public Instruction (DPI): Vaughan MacCaughey, Willard Givens and William Crawford, all of whom struggled to resolve what they termed the “Problem of the Rural Schools”. By 1933 they considered Hawaiʻi a success on three fronts: It was a “racial laboratory” where democracy proved its durability, a “racial paradise” where children of all ethnicities learned and worked together, and a “plantation’s paradise” where a race based class and labor system proved resilient enough to ensure the sugar and pineapple industries' financial fortunes. This work represents the first systematic study of the intimacies of the Agro-Educational complex of Territorial Hawaiʻi as a unified colonial system of control. It provides a valuable foundation for future works on this subject, and raises many important research questions that augur for continued study in the years to come.
The Cultural Politics of Drone Warfare
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2024) Jung, Jiyeon; Eagle, Jonna; American Studies
My thesis examines visual representations of drones across three contemporary media—television (Amazon Studios’ Jack Ryan series), museum exhibitions (Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum’s 2017 exhibition “Drones: Is Sky the Limit?”), and video games (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games)—with a focus on how they each broach the ethical issues inherent in the discourse of drone warfare, such as targeted killing, civilian casualties, and surveillance. More specifically, I contend that these cultural products all participate in reinforcing the logic of U.S. imperialism that justifies and exonerates the use of armed drones in U.S. military campaigns overseas. The texts portray the use of armed drones as necessary, precise, and just, emphasize the human experience of drone operators, and as a result, neglect a more sustained discussion on the devastating consequences of drone warfare on civilian lives.
PILGRIMS, PLYMOUTH, AND PUBLIC MEMORY: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF CONTEMPORARY NEW ENGLAND FOUNDATION MYTHOLOGY
(University of Hawai'i at Manoa, 2021) Wilday, Emily; McDougall, Brandy; American Studies
What connections exist between the stories a nation tells about its origins and the ways it continues to reproduce itself in the present day? How can we make sense of the vast ways settler colonialism is bound up with contemporary practices of commemoration, public history, and memory work? The following thesis looks at the stories told about the seventeenth century colonization of the land known today as New England. The foundational premise for this investigation is that there exists a generative relationship between the modern-day deployment and circulation of the Mayflower/Plymouth/Pilgrim narrative and the continuance of settler colonial conditions on Turtle Island. Tracking the evolution of the narrative at museums, monuments, historic sites, the Thanksgiving holiday, and settler genealogy groups, the thesis contributes a series of novel case studies and suggests directions for further development in the societal retelling of this history.
"We call to the voices of Waialua" Envisioning a Waialua Heritage Center Connecting Past, Present and Future
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2021) Greiner, Rachel Elise; Kosasa, Karen; American Studies
How can community-based museums, archives and libraries (memory institutions) build an organization that is accountable to the community at all levels of the organization? In Waialua, community members have fought changes brought on by settler-colonialism including over-development, tourism and military development for many generations. This thesis will provide recommendations for how a heritage center can support this continued fight by drawing on the hands-on experiences of community-focused memory institution professionals, and the wisdom and experiences of community members from Waialua working with the North Shore Ethnographic Field School. From "behind-the-scenes” strategies for community consultation and staffing policies, to front-facing exhibit design and education practices, community-based memory institutions must find ways to be accountable and committed to the communities they represent.
Island: Aldous Huxley’s 1962 Utopian Novel Island And Its Literary And Social Significance In Postwar American Society
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2020) Martin, Kevin John; Perkinson, Robert; American Studies
In 1962, Aldous Huxley, one of the greatest authors of the 20th century, published a utopian novel titled Island. During his career, Huxley wrote eleven novels; Island was his final novel and the most important to Huxley personally. Island was not Huxley’s most famous or acclaimed book, but he and many others considered Island to be his most influential and far-reaching. Huxley spent his life traveling, studying the world, and looking for solutions that would liberate individuals from the tyranny of authoritarian control, discourage mass militarization, and halt the innovation of predatory technological developments. The intersectional of control, militarization, and industrialism left Huxley and many others disillusioned and pessimistic about the future of humanity. However, after a series of spiritual epiphanies, Huxley began to envision the possibility of the postwar period of 1954-1962 as a time where people could demand change and create a more equitable, inhabitable, and peaceful world instead of succumbing to the blight of modernity. At the time, it was a radical belief that the future of humanity could result in the betterment of the human race, as most of the popular literature of that era focused on destruction, suffering, and chaos. Most importantly, this particular utopian vision was unlike anything previously proposed, as it sought to integrate Eastern mysticism and Western science. This thesis argues that Island exemplifies the most salient social concerns from the postwar 1950s epoch in American society. By the 1950s, a growing resentment towards traditional American values became visible through various social movements such as the Beatnik Movement, the 1960s Anti-war Counterculture Movement, and the Human Potential Movement. I will examine three popular texts – Lord of the Flies by William Golding, On The Road by Jack Kerouac, and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson – to illustrate the difference between Island compared to other books of the time. Each one of those books became popular because they presented a searing critique of authoritarian control, colonial values, and mass industrialization, all of which Huxley provides a solution to in Island.
Critical Masses: American Populationism, Eugenics, And War, 1945 To 1975
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2019) Barsocchini, Robert Joseph; Eagle, Jonna; American Studies
This thesis argues that American thinkers in the post-war period (1945 to 1975) who diagnosed global overpopulation made implicit suggestions that “population problems” could be addressed by raising death rates, such as through war. I illustrate that the fear of population growth, which became ubiquitous in the United States during this time, largely derives from eugenically influenced concerns over losing power relative to colonized people of color around the world, but that these concerns also predate eugenics. I then apply this lens to readings of the Korean and Vietnam wars, arguing that populationist thinking is evident in these campaigns and that its prevalence at this time likely intensified American violence and increased a focus on eliminating large numbers of people, including civilians.
Making Raiders: Material Culture at ‘Iolani School
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-08) Greenhill, Tyler A. K.; American Studies
That Does Not Compute: Unpacking the Fembot in American Science Fiction.
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2017-05) DeSure, Pearl A.; American Studies
Miss Represented: Misrepresentations of Kanaka Maoli Women in American Cinema and Moolelo as Alternative Method
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2016-12) Leao, Oriana
Since 1898, countless American films have depicted “Hawaiian” women but only a handful that uniquely convey the lived experiences, well-being, and accurate cultural depictions of Native Hawaiian women. This text argues that Native Hawaiian women have been misrepresented in American Cinema and that Native Hawaiian mo‘olelo (stories and oral histories) should be utilized as an alternative method for representing Native Hawaiian women. This thesis offers an analysis of the film Princess Ka‘iulani (2010) by director Marc Forby in order to explore examples of the very gendered, nationalist, historical, and racialized ways in which Kānaka women have been depicted. The second part of this thesis explores the ways in which Kānaka women could be depicted differently through a discussion of mo‘olelo and mana wahine. The hope of this study is to provide a space where representations of Native Hawaiian women in American Cinema can be discussed in a way that is productive and constructive. The goal is to shift past multifaceted arenas of difference and reimagine ways to remap difference.
Urban Ruins and the Myths of Modernity: Challenge and Resistance through the Work of Sarah R. Bloom
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2015-08) Dunn, Amy
This thesis explores the political potentialities of urban ruins through an investigation of ruins generally as well as through the work of artist Sarah R. Bloom. Ultimately this thesis describes urban ruins and their imagery as sites where powerful political (re)mapping of neoliberal capitalist modernity occurs. Whether through a (re)mapping of time, space, or hegemonic notions such as disposability, images of urban ruins do important work toward imagining alternative futures that are more just and sustainable for both humans and nature.
Kimono as art: exhibiting and staging Japanese culture in Canton, Ohio
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2013-05) Rand, Melissa Louise
While there have been a substantial amount of academic studies on the representation of Asian and Asian Americans in film and literature, far less has been written about their representation in museum exhibitions. With this thesis, I hope to help bridge a gap between the fields of Asian American studies and museum studies. One of my primary interests in museum studies is in examining the relationships that museums forge and maintain with their communities and the way that those relationships are always in flux. Currently, many museums and cultural organizations are seeking new ways to reach more diverse audiences, recognizing they will not be sustainable if they only appeal to what has traditionally been the American museum's audience in the recent past--middle and upper middle class white Americans. By examining the relationships between several different community groups in Canton, I would like this study to contribute to the existing literature on museum and communities as well as literature on the representation of cultures in a museum setting. Leilani Nishime's article "Communities on Display," one of the first readings I encountered that addresses the representation of Asian Americans (and specifically Japanese Americans) in museums, was very influential in cultivating my desire to pursue further research in this area. I was also greatly inspired by Robert Lavenda's ethnographic case study, "Festivals and Public Culture," in Minnesota, the results of which were published in the anthology, Museum and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. This article stood out for me long before I began work on this project, namely because ofthe similarities I found between the small towns that Lavenda examines and the small towns that I grew up around in the Stark County area. In Canton, Asians were subjected to a "white gaze" and became objects of curiosity. At times, little thought was given to the reactions of the Japanese American/Asian American communities towards the content of some of the events. When Japanese and Japanese American participants did make suggestions, they were often rejected, ignored, or questioned. KLC members were reluctant to relinquish their idea of how they wanted to see Japanese culture presented an idea of Japan that was based on Orientalist imagery and pastoral romanticism. The Kimono as Art exhibition and its auxiliary events proposed to educate the people of Canton about Japanese culture. However, it also alienated Asian Americans from the majority of the Canton community by perpetuating Orientalist themes that rendered them as "the Other" and place them on the periphery of mainstream American culture. The complexity of overlapping relationships in Canton between the Japanese and Japanese Americans; between the Arts in Stark and the Canton Museum of Art; between working, lower middle class, and the upper middle class audiences; and between the Japanese/Japanese Americans and the Kimono Leadership Committee--provided an interesting case study on how museums and cultural institutions navigate the terrain of diversity. Kimono as Art was successful in attracting visitors who did not normally visit museums. But I wonder, did it offer appropriate cultural experiences of Japanese culture to the community of Canton and Stark County?
Enthusiastic religion and the lives of Titus and Fidelia Coan, missionaries to Hilo
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1986-08) Ehlke, Margaret S.
The great awakenings, or times of religious revivals in America, produced sweeping changes not only in theology, but in social and intellectual perceptions. The Second Great Awakening, from 1795 to 1835, led to the remarkable missionary movement which sent Christian men and women around the world to convert the "heathen." These dedicated young people experienced the · suffering that came from following the dictates of Jesus Christ; they willingly placed their lives in jeopardy for their religious faith. The Protestant missionaries to Hawaii have been called Calvinists, but what exactly does that mean? The label seems to denote people of one theological persuasion, yet the American missionaries to Hawaii arrived in the Islands between 1820 and 1848, a span of almost thirty years. We shall discover that they were not cast in the same theological mold, and that their thinking reflected the changes taking place in the political, intellectual and religious environment in America.
Orientalism at Shangri La
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2010-12) Jones, Leslie Diane
Part of the mission of Shangri La as a museum is to expose the public, who may not have had any exposure to it previously, to Islamic art and culture for the first time. Therefore, rather than considering the message of the estate to scholars of Islamic art and culture, this paper will focus on the possible messages taken away by the public at large who have had little previous exposure to the art and culture of Islam.4 Considering that the majority of tours are given only in English, and first time visitors may only be familiar with Shangri La as the home of an extremely wealthy woman, narrowing the origins of the average tour attendee to a visitor from the U.S. mainland or Hawaii is helpful. Certainly some do come from other countries, but these are limited both by their facility with the language as well as their interest in the home of a woman they may have heard little about. Visitors from the United States, however have almost certainly at some time heard the phrase "the richest little girl in the world," or been exposed to stories in the media of Doris Duke's eccentricities. Visitors who have a background in Islamic art, the Middle East, or are simply from another country will certainly have a different perspective, but for the purposes of this paper, the average visitor to Shangri La is considered to be from the U. S. mainland or Hawaiʻi, and have little exposure to the Islamic world beyond the American media.
Repatriation in Hawaii: its complexities and challenges
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2011-12) Awong, Lesly Keolanui
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) passed in 1990 by an act of the U.S. Congress. It provides a process for museums and federal agencies to return human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects and/or objects of cultural patrimony to Native Americans. This law is an important tool for indigenous peoples in the United States. By empowering them to reclaim the bones of their ancestors and some of their mea kapu (forbidden things) housed in museums across the country, NAGPRA allows native peoples to address the problems of American hegemony and begins the process of righting a series of historical wrongs. But what appears to be a good resolution to the unjust treatment of indigenous peoples has created a problem for Native Hawaiian communities.
The Japanese and Okinawan American communities and Shintoism in Hawaii: through the case of Izumo Taishakyo Mission of Hawaii
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2012-05) Kinjo, Sawako
In this thesis, I focus on the Izumo Taishakyo Mission of Hawaii on the grounds that the shrine surpasses other Shinto shrines in the length of its history (on O'ahu Island), the population of visitors, and the scale of the building. This thesis intends to examine the perspectives of two different groups: the Japanese Americans and the Okinawan Americans. My research questions are: 1) How has the Izumo Taishakyo Mission of Hawaii functioned in the Japanese American community over time? 2) How do Japanese Americans or Okinawan Americans perceive Shintoism and Shinto shrines in Hawaii today? 3) How do Okinawan American outlooks to Shintoism or Shinto shrines in Hawaii differ from those of Japanese American?
Daughters from China: transnational adoption and imagining cold war and post-cold war China
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-05) Luo, Yanli
Stepping into the classroom at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in fall 2012, I was surprised to see a senior white lady sitting in my Chinese class, and that was how I got to know Linda, a white mother of three adopted Chinese daughters. Driven by the desire to understand her daughters' birth culture and encourage them to learn Chinese, she became one of the most diligent students in the class that semester. At the same time, she kept her full-time job as a physician and took the sole responsibility of taking care of her daughters when her professor husband left the island on business trips. Once we got to know each other better, she began to tell me how she and her husband adopted their daughters. "Why did you choose to adopt only girls?" I asked one day. She told me because girls in China were suffering, and she wished she could adopt more girls and offer them a better life. "You can't imagine what would happen to the girls if they were left in China!" She exclaimed, with tears in her eyes. I tried to find out how she had the impression that girls were suffering in China, but she couldn't remember whether she got it from newspapers or other sources. However, she recalled that in the 1990s when she and her husband decided to adopt from China, news of girls suffering in China "was everywhere," and she herself never doubted it was true. This conversation triggered my interest in researching how transnational adoption from China has been represented in American popular culture and how China and Chinese people, specifically women and girls, have been imagined in the representations. I was less driven by curiosity than by uneasiness that what Linda read about girls suffering in China was not what I knew about China. Born a female in the Chinese countryside, and travelling far and wide later for college and graduate school or simply for sightseeing in the country, I never felt I or most other girls I met were suffering. It is not my intention to disprove Linda and American representations of Chinese women and girls. What I am interested in is how images of China and of the United States have been constructed, and what ideologies have been constructed by these cultural representations. Linda's words also suggest that she felt it was her obligation to rescue girls from China and offer them a better life. Where did this narrative of rescue and obligation come from? This thesis addresses these issues by analyzing American cultural representations of transnational adoption from China during the Cold War period and post-Cold War decade.
Pacific Pastoralism: ancient poetics & the deconstruction of American paradise
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-05) Hancock, Travis David
This aim of this thesis is to deconstruct the etymology of the word "paradise" within the context of early Pacific narratives by popular American authors, and then within today's tourist propaganda. Fundamental to that process is the imagination of "Pacific Pastoralism," in which the pastoral tradition is considered as a predecessor to American traditions of describing the landscapes and peoples of the Pacific region, as those descriptions fueled an economy forcibly mapped onto that space. Herein texts are analyzed via close-reading comparisons, historical research, and more lyrical methods such as rhetorical stargazing, echolocation, and narrative technique. While this thesis is indebted to scholars in the fields of American Studies and English literature, it attempts to open space for Pacific Island Studies to epistemologically counter its cultural materialist claims. In total, this thesis is a critique of tourist marketing, which was ferried from antiquity to the Pacific on wooden ships, and today renders beaches little more than golf course sand-traps.
Questioning filmic constructions of reality
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-05) Fukunishi, Keiko
This thesis attempts to denaturalize realist filming techniques in order to highlight how these techniques shaped and continue to shape racial and political power imbalances. Through examining how racism pervaded the foundations of the study of anthropology and anthropological filmmaking, I attempt to show how filming techniques produced meanings of race that were nurtured by white male centered ideas of the world. This thesis also demonstrates how realist filming techniques work to challenge racism by analyzing anti-war films about the Vietnam War. The anti-war films present powerful criticism against U.S. centered patriotic views of the Vietnam War and racism against the Vietnamese. While underlining these unique ideological interventions by realist filming techniques, this thesis attempts to suggest that the realist filmmaking techniques employed in these anti-war films function to perpetuate power imbalanced relationships between American and Vietnamese people even as they challenge racism against the Vietnamese. Lastly, this thesis examines some of the experimental films that attempt to disrupt the realist filming techniques that continue to perpetuate racial power imbalances. As a conclusion, this thesis emphasizes the fluidity of meanings created through filmmaking techniques. Even though white male centered ideas of race persists in realist filming techniques, this study shows that there are powerful visual and historical proofs that realist filmmaking techniques do in fact challenge dominant racial ideology. In sum, this thesis aims to unravel the ideological tendency behind realist filming techniques.
Tale of two discourses: an analysis of Washington Place
(University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2014-12) Delos Reyes, Carmen Uluwehi Brito
Senate Bill 1520: In an attempt to further self-determination for Native Hawaiians, the Governor of Hawaiʻi, Neil Abercrombie, signed Senate Bill 1520 on February 06, 2011. The ceremony was held at the historic Washington Place and was attended by approximately 150 people, including representatives from various Native Hawaiian societies, State lawmakers, and Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustees. Senate Bill 1520, now Act 195, "gives the Governor the power to appoint a five-member Native Hawaiian Roll Commission that will build a foundation for selfdetermination and eventually lead to Native Hawaiian Recognition." Governor Abercrombie later stated that, "with the signing of this bill, the State of Hawaiʻi is closer to reorganization of a Native Hawaiian governing entity. As Native Hawaiians rise, all of Hawaiʻi rises." While some praised Abercrombie's gesture, others interpreted the bill as another method to curb Hawaiian sovereignty. It was written in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that, "sovereignty advocates decried the measure as an attempt to deny Native Hawaiians' claims to govern as a sovereign independent nation." The signing of this act can be construed as a step towards self-determination for Native Hawaiians, yet it still remains confined within the boundaries of the United States. The restrictions of this bill are similar to the limitations of the historical interpretation of Washington Place in regards to Hawaiʻi's colonial history. In the same way that the Bill attempts to control and constrict Native Hawaiian attempts for self-determination, the narrative and current uses of Washington Place are confined within the boundaries of the State of Hawaiʻi's historical interpretation of Hawaiʻi's colonial history.

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