Author: stephchun

New in the Critical Interventions Series

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Uneven ModernityPostsocialist China is marked by paradoxes: economic boom, political conservatism, cultural complexity. Uneven Modernity: Literature, Film, and Intellectual Discourse in Postsocialist China, Haomin Gong’s dynamic study of these paradoxes, or “unevenness,” provides a unique and seminal approach to contemporary China. Reading unevenness as a problem and an opportunity simultaneously, Gong investigates how this dialectical social situation shapes cultural production.

Critical Interventions
December 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3531-6 / $47.00 (CLOTH)

New in the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monograph Series

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One and ManyIs the world one or many? In One and Many: A Comparative Study of Plato’s Philosophy and Daoism Represented by Ge Hong, Ji Zhang revisits this ancient philosophical question from the modern perspective of comparative studies. His investigation stages an intellectual exchange between Plato, founder of the Academy, and Ge Hong, who systematized Daoist belief and praxis. Zhang not only captures the tension between rational Platonism and abstruse Daoism, but also creates a bridge between the two.

“This is a work of great intellectual daring, requiring immense erudition and impressive power of synthesis. The topic, comparing the ontological ideas of Plato and Ge Hong with special reference to their implications for the one-many problem, is unique, stimulating and highly important, identifying a crucial area for cross-cultural and comparative research and producing a creative, informed, thoughtful, incisive and skillful response to the considerable challenge of making such an ambitious project bear fruit.” —Dr. Brook Ziporyn, Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Department of Religious Studies, Northwestern University

Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Monographs, No. 22
December 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3554-5 / $27.00 (PAPER)

In Memoriam — Jon Van Dyke

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John Van DykeJon Van Dyke, professor, author, and a leading authority on Native Hawaiian law and constitutional law, passed away on November 29 while traveling in Australia. He joined the University of Hawai‘i Richardson School of Law in 1976 and was one of its longest-serving and most distinguished faculty members.

“Hawaii has lost a steadfast advocate for Native Hawaiian and civil rights, a leading expert on Hawaiian land and water rights law, and a tireless defender of public lands and natural resources.” —Hawai‘i State Senator Daniel Akaka

Photo: Star-Advertiser archives

UH Press Authors Advise The Descendants

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The DescendantsAccording to the Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy, UH Press authors Gavan Daws (Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands) and Randall Roth (Broken Trust: Greed, Mismanagement, and Political Manipulation at America’s Largest Charitable Trust) served as “tour guides through Honolulu society” for filmmakers Alexander Payne and Jim Burke during preproduction of The Descendants.

In addition, Daws read the script and shared his thoughts on the soundtrack, which features Hawai‘i artists exclusively. Roth provided guidance on trust law, in particular the rule against perpetuities—a key point in the plot surrounding George Clooney’s character, who must decide whether or not to sell a piece of prime Kaua‘i real estate that has been in his family for generations.

Photo: Fox Searchlight

Last 3 Days to Save 20% Off Our Entire Site

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Holiday Web Sale 2011

Tips and info for ordering at our website during the sale:

  • Go to www.uhpress.hawaii.edu and log in OR click on the New Members Sign Up Here link and create an account before you order.
  • UH Press authors only: If you have just created an account, please have your author status verified before ordering. After creating your account, email uhpbooks@hawaii.edu for verification.
  • If you plan to send your order to an address other than your own, click on your login name to the left of the shopping cart icon, go to Your Address Book, and Add Another Shipping Address. One shipping address per order.
  • To receive free shipping in the U.S., please check that
    1) your order totals at least $50.00;
    2) you entered “HWS11” in the Coupon or Gift Card box; and
    3) you chose “USA Media Mail” as the shipping method
  • Wish List items are not eligible for the 20% discount or free shipping.
  • This offer cannot be combined with other discounts.

Big Happiness: One of the Best Local Books of 2011

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Big HappinessBig Happiness: The Life and Death of a Modern Hawaiian Warrior, by Mark Panek, is called “one of the best local books of 2011” in a review at Hawai‘i Book Blog:

“Big Happiness is an account of the amazing and tragic life of Percy Kipapa, local boy turned professional sumo wrestler. In my opinion it’s an important work of creative nonfiction and one of the best local books of 2011. Using a combination of personal experiences with Kipapa, interviews, newspaper articles and court documents, Panek has seamlessly composed a narrative that tells the story of how Percy Kipapa came home a hero only to end his life as a terrible reminder of the destructive power of “meth” addiction. It’s an unofficial biography of a man and a community struggling to stay afloat in a world changing too quickly.”

Read the entire review here: http://www.hawaiibookblog.com/articles/book-review-big-happiness/.

Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai‘i

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The Painted KingFor more information on The Painted King author events in Hawai‘i this month, go to: http://uhpress.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/the-painted-king-book-launches./

The famous statue of Kamehameha I in downtown Honolulu is one of the state’s most popular landmarks. Many tourists—and residents—however, are unaware that the statue is a replica; the original, cast in Paris in the 1880s and the first statue in the Islands, stands before the old courthouse in rural Kapa‘au, North Kohala, the legendary birthplace of Kamehameha I. In 1996 conservator Glenn Wharton was sent by public arts administrators to assess the statue’s condition, and what he found startled him: A larger-than-life brass figure painted over in brown, black, and yellow with “white toenails and fingernails and penetrating black eyes with small white brush strokes for highlights. . . . It looked more like a piece of folk art than a nineteenth-century heroic monument.”

The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawai‘i is Wharton’s account of his efforts to conserve the Kohala Kamehameha statue, but it is also the story of his journey to understand the statue’s meaning for the residents of Kapa‘au.

“The Painted King will be essential reading for creators, curators, and devotees of public art.” —David Lowenthal, University College London; author of The Past Is a Foreign Country

“A path-breaking volume in conservation studies, The Painted King is certain to prompt readers to think further about the relationship between community and conservation in Hawaiian art, identity, and history.” —Stacy L. Kamehiro, author of The Arts of Kingship: Hawaiian Art and National Culture of the Kalākaua Era

November 2011
ISBN 978-0-8248-3495-1 $42.00 (CLOTH)
ISBN 978-0-8248-3612-2 / $19.00 (PAPER)

A Cultural History of Kanaky-New Calendonia

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Nights of StorytellingNights of Storytelling: A Cultural History of New Caledonia, edited by Raylene Ramsay, is the first book to present and contextualize the founding texts of New Caledonia, a country sui generis in the relatively little-known French Pacific. Extracts from literary, ethnographic, and historical works in English translation introduce the many voices of a diverse culture as it moves toward “independence” or the “common destiny” framed by the 1998 Noumea Agreements. These texts reflect the coexistence of two major cultures, indigenous and European, shaped by the energies and shadows of empire and significantly influenced by one another.

Nights of Storytelling is a collaborative work complemented by La nuit des contes, a subtitled DVD of images and text, which features key works read or spoken, generally in the original French. It provides visual and aural access for the book’s Anglophone readers to the specific cultural, linguistic, and geographic contexts of these historical and literary works.

November 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3222-3 / $49.00 (CLOTH + DVD)

The Work of Early Hawaiian Artisans

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Links to the PastThe work of Hawaiian artisans at the time of Western contact was woven seamlessly into their everyday lives and culture—the details of which are now lost. Although we can no longer comprehend the objects left to us with the same depth of understanding as early Hawaiians, we can appreciate their aesthetic qualities and the skill used in their construction, particularly when numerous pieces of the same type are viewed together. Links to the Past: The Work of Early Hawaiian Artisans, by Wendy S. Arbeit, makes this possible by reuniting more than a thousand eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Hawaiian artifacts from over seventy institutions and collections worldwide.

November 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3476-0 / $75.00 (CLOTH)

Isaiah Walker at ESPN ActionSports, the HIC Pro

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Isaiah Walker; photo by Daniel ItoLast week Isaiah Helekunihi Walker was featured at ESPN ActionSports, where he spoke about the inspiration behind his book Waves of Resistance: Surfing and History in Twentieth-Century Hawai‘i:

“I was born and raised in Hilo, and growing up in Hilo I always had an image of these surfers called ‘The Hui,’ so when I was on the North Shore, going to school, somebody told me ‘there is a guy [the late Imbert Soren] who works here, and he started the club and you gotta go meet him. . . . [Soren] was so cool to me—a lot of aloha and hugs. . . . [Meeting him] was a really different vibe of what I thought and what I imagined as a child. It started me off on this journey of interviewing more surfers, and from those interviews and stories, it led to a deeper analysis of how much deeper we had to look to understand some of these voices.”

Read the full post: http://espn.go.com/action/surfing/blog/_/post/7224826/shedding-light-hawaiian-culture

Walker was also interviewed at the 2011 HIC Pro, held earlier this month at Sunset Beach. Watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwYThrsIbVE

Photo by Daniel Ikaika Ito

Fifty Years of Monitoring the Atmosphere

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Hawaii's Mauna Loa ObservatoryHawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) is one of the world’s leading scientific stations for monitoring the atmosphere. For more than fifty years, beginning with atmospheric chemist Charles Keeling’s readings of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, MLO has provided climate scientists a continuous record of the atmosphere’s increasing concentration of carbon dioxide—and sparked the international debate over global warming. Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory: Fifty Years of Monitoring the Atmosphere, by Forrest M. Mims III, tells the story of the men and women who made these and many other measurements near the summit of the world’s largest mountain.

November 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3431-9 / $60.00 (CLOTH)

New Volume in Collected Works of Wonhyo

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Wonhyo's Philosophy of MindWonhyo’s Philosophy of Mind, edited by A. Charles Muller and Cuong T. Nguyen, includes four of the great Silla scholiast’s (617–686) works that are especially revelatory of his treatment of the complex flow of ideas in his generation: System of the Two Hindrances (Yijang ui), Treatise on the Ten Ways of Resolving Controversies (Simmun hwajaeng non), Commentary on the Discrimination between the Middle and the Extremes (Chungbyon punbyollon so), and the Critical Discussion on Inference (P’an piryang non).

November 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3573-6 / $45.00 (CLOTH)
The International Association of Wonhyo Studies’ Collected Works of Wonhyo, Volume 2

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