Category: geography

Carlos Andrade Book Launch at Native Books

Posted on by stephchun

Carlos Andrade will read from and discuss his recently published book, Ha‘ena: Through the Eyes of the Ancestors, on Thursday, October 30, 6:30-8:30 p.m., at Native Books/Na Mea Hawai‘i, Ward Warehouse. A book signing and light refreshments will follow. The event is free and open to the public.

Andrade is associate professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawai‘i and director of the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies. Ha‘ena reveals the complex history of a rich and fertile ahupua‘a in north Kaua‘i, blending folklore, geography, history, and ethnography.

Geography, Performance, Design

Posted on by stephchun


We do not see empty figures and outlines; we do not move in straight lines. Everywhere we are surrounded by dapple; the geometry of our embodied lives is curviform, meandering, bi-pedal. Our personal worlds are timed, inter-positional, and contingent. But nowhere in the language of cartography and design do these ordinary experiences appear. This, Dark Writing argues, is a serious omission because they are designs on the world: architects and colonizers use their lines to construct the places where we will live. But the rectilinear streets, squares, and public spaces produced in this way leave out people and the entire environmental history of their coming together. How, author Paul Carter asks, can we explain the omission of bodies from maps and plans? And how can we redraw the lines maps and plans use so that the qualitative world of shadows, footprints, comings and goings, and occasions—all essential qualities of places that incubate sociality—can be registered?

Writing Past Colonialism
Published in association with the Institute of Postcolonial Studies, University of Melbourne
October 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3312-1 / $28.00 (PAPER)

Vanished Islands and Hidden Continents

Posted on by stephchun


Islands—as well as entire continents—are reputed to have disappeared in many parts of the world. Yet there is little information on this subject concerning its largest ocean, the Pacific. Over the years, geologists have amassed data that point to the undeniable fact of islands having disappeared in the Pacific, a phenomenon that the oral traditions of many groups of Pacific Islanders also highlight. There are even a few instances where fragments of Pacific continents have disappeared, becoming hidden from view rather than being submerged. In Vanished Islands and Hidden Continents of the Pacific, a scientifically rigorous yet readily comprehensible account of a fascinating subject, Patrick D. Nunn ranges far and wide, from explanations of the region’s ancient history to the meanings of island myths. Using both original and up-to-date information, he shows that there is real value in bringing together myths and the geological understanding of land movements.

October 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3219-3 / $50.00 (CLOTH)

A Distinctive History of Haena

Posted on by stephchun


Ha‘ena is a land steeped in antiquity yet vibrantly beautiful today as any Hollywood fantasy of a tropical paradise. He ‘aina momona, a rich and fertile land linked to the sea and the rising and setting sun, is a place of gods and goddesses: Pele and her sister, Hi‘iaka, and Laka, patron of hula. It epitomizes the best that can be found in the district of northwestern Kaua‘i, known to aboriginal Hawaiians as Hale Le‘a (House of Pleasure and Delight). Ha‘ena: Through the Eyes of Ancestors, by Carlos Andrade, is an ambitious attempt to provide a unique perspective in the complex story of the ahupua‘a of Ha‘ena.

July 2008 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3119-6 / $30.00 (CLOTH)

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