Fall 2017 Biography Brown Bag Series

The editors of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly and directors of the Center for Biographical Research at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa have announced their Fall 2017 schedule of Biography Brown Bags.

If you’re in Hawai’i, don’t miss this exciting line-up of speakers here to talk about life writing. Each event listed below is held from noon to 1:15 p.m. Thursdays in Kuykendall Room 409 at UH Mānoa. Bring your lunch and enjoy!

Sept. 14: Noenoe K. Silva, a contributor to The Hawaiian Journal of History, on ‘Elua Maka Kila: How Joseph Kānepu’u and Joseph Poepoe Contributed to the Life of ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i

Sept. 21: Daven Chang on Composing Mele for Community

Sept. 28: Kyle Kajihiro on Mehameha Wale No O Pu’uloa, I Ka Hele A Ka’ahupāhau: Lonely Was Pu’uloa when Ka’ahupāhau Went Away

Oct. 5: Virgie Chattergy on Pinay: Culture Bearers of the Filipino Diaspora

Oct. 12: Carla Manfredi on Little House in the Bush: Afterlives of Vailima

Oct. 19: Patricia Steinhoff on her UH Press book, Destiny: The Secret Operations of the Yodogō Exiles

Oct. 26: Otto Heim on Pacific Ghost Stories: John Kneubuhl and Oral History

Nov. 2: Sandra Bonura, on her UH Press book, Light in the Queen’s Garden: Ida May Pope, Pioneer for Hawai‘i’s Daughters, 1862–1914

Nov. 9: Lauren Nishimura on Hawaiian Ancestry: Positioning Indigeneity in the Na’i Aupuni Biographies

Nov. 16: Kim Compoc on American Tutelage Gone Awry: Antonio Taguba, Filipino Americanism, and the Critique of Torture

Nov. 30: Anna Feurstein on The Animal That Therefore I Am Not: The Politics of Animal (Auto)biography from Black Beauty to Cat Internet Videos

See flyer below or visit CBR’s Facebook page for more details.

Read Biography archives at Project MUSE

The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 29 no. 2 (2017)

Featured art in the new issue of The Contemporary Pacific by Selwyn Muru: On 9 June 2017, 135 years after government troops invaded and violently decimated the Māori settlement of Parihaka (and at the time this issue of the journal was about to go to press), a Crown apology was finally offered to the people of Parihaka. The gesture is more than symbolic: an additional deed of reconciliation, legacy statement, ongoing relationship agreements with local and national government, a development fund, and legislation are being put in place to ensure that the Crown’s commitment is legally binding. Parihaka Papakainga Trust Chair Puna Wano-Bryant’s declaration of a “new dawn” echoed sentiments expressed at the time of Parihaka’s founding. The cover image depicts two important prophets, peacemakers, and leaders of nonviolent resistance in this story: Te Whiti o Rongomai, who helped establish Parihaka with Tohu Kakahi, and their colleague Riwha Titokowaru, who was blind in one eye, and who was arguably “the best general New Zealand has ever produced” (James Belich, in Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand).

This issue of The Contemporary Pacific features a dialogue, “Losing Oceania to the Pacific and the World,” political reviews, the work of artist Selwyn Muru, book and media reviews, and the following articles:

  • Climate Change and the Imagining of Migration: Emerging Discourses on Kiribati’s Land Purchase in Fiji by Elfriede Hermann and Wolfgang Kempf
  • Charting Pacific (Studies) Waters: Evidence of Teaching and Learning by Teresia K. Teaiwa

Continue reading “The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 29 no. 2 (2017)”

Biography Vol. 40 No. 1 (Winter 2017)

Jaya Daronde, Relationship, oil on canvas. From Caste Life Narratives, Visual Representation, and Protected Ignorance in this issue. Copyright and reproduced courtesy of the artist.

This special issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly focuses on Caste and Life Narratives. From the guest editors:

Life narratives ranging from autobiographies and biographies to blogs and pictorial art have historically played a vital role in both the affirmation as well as interrogation of caste identities. However, serious study of life narratives in relationship to caste is still relatively underdeveloped. The scholarship on caste (or the varna-jati complex) is vast, as is the study of life narratives as a genre—it is the conjunction of the two that especially merits sustained scrutiny. The study of caste is animated by a Critical Caste Studies that takes its bearing from Dalit Studies, a lively area of scholarly endeavor in recent years, in order to explore diverse phenomena within the varna-jati complex. The scrutiny of life narratives in conjunction with caste promises to expand the scope of inquiry into life narratives by bringing new cultural contexts into the discussion and by enabling the formulation of new theoretical questions of genre. Such an investigation contributes to the study of caste by directing attention to fresh archives and by making available for analysis in powerful ways questions of identity. The critical work of studying caste in conjunction with life narratives is most pertinent with regard to India but includes the South Asian diaspora as well as other countries such as Japan.

— Editors’ Introduction: “My Birth Is My Fatal Accident”: Introduction to Caste and Life Narratives by S. Shankar and Charu Gupta

Literary Lives

Continue reading “Biography Vol. 40 No. 1 (Winter 2017)”

Interview: Korean Studies Editor Christopher J. Bae

Korean Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal on Korea and Koreans Abroad celebrates its 25th year in 2017. With that milestone also comes new leadership with editor-in-chief Christopher J. Bae of our very own University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Read more about his background and goals for the annual publication in our interview below. You may also preview early release articles from the forthcoming volume or browse archives of the journal on Project MUSE.

Christopher J. Bae, an UH Mānoa professor of anthropology and the new editor of Korean Studies, is shown here at an excavation site in Korea.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your new role as editor of Korean Studies.

I am a full professor in the UH Mānoa Department of Anthropology, and I specialize in the field of Asian paleoanthropology (human evolutionary studies.) I particularly focus on early human sites and materials in Korea, China, and Japan, and have recently started to investigate setting up similar research projects in Southeast Asia. So the connection for me with Korean Studies is that one of my core areas of focus is Korea, as I have worked there for the past quarter century collaborating on a diversity of projects related primarily to Korean prehistory.

The invitation to take over the editorship of the journal actually came as a surprise to me as the previous editor(s) have been doing a fine job managing the journal. That being said, I was honored to be invited to take on the role of editor of the journal as it is one of the oldest and most prestigious Korean studies focused journals outside of Korea.

How has Korean Studies evolved over the years?

Korean Studies was started by the Center for Korean Studies at UH Mānoa in 1977. It is a journal that is published annually and we will publish our forty-first volume this year. The main goal of the journal has always been to publish original research on Korean studies from humanities and social science perspectives. That goal has not changed since its inception. One minor change perhaps may be that we have become more open to publishing conference proceedings in the journal. For instance, in Vol. 37 (2013), we included a special section titled “Urban Cultural Landscapes of Colonial Korea, 1920s-1930s” that featured papers from a two-day conference held at the Center for Korean Studies at UH Mānoa in February 2012.

Have you learned anything interesting from your first months as editor?

Probably the most interesting aspect that I have learned since taking over the editorship is how broad Korean studies really is. I personally am learning a great deal about the different fields and how they contribute to the broader picture of Korean studies generally. Korean Studies is serving to broaden my own horizons in this area and from that perspective I really enjoy serving in this role.

In your field, what issues are particularly relevant right now? 

North Korean politics is probably one of the hottest topics within Korean studies right now. As such, one of the first decisions I made after taking over the editorship was to invite Victor D. Cha, currently one of the most prominent U.S.-based specialists on North Korea, to contribute an article to Korean Studies. Cha’s piece “Informal Empire: The Origins of the U.S.–ROK Alliance and the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty Negotiations” will appear in Vol. 41. I anticipate Cha’s paper should be well-received and well-cited.

Do you have any advice for academics interested in submitting to your journal?

We are open to submissions on any topic related to Korean studies. But if an author is not sure whether his/her manuscript may be suitable for our journal, they should contact the editor directly.

We have new Author Guidelines posted online (click here). It would help any potential authors to make sure their manuscripts follow the Author Guidelines closely before submitting their manuscripts.

What’s next for Korean Studies?

Since taking over the journal, I have started to make a number of changes. In particular, the journal now has formal Author Guidelines and a “News and Comments” section where authors may comment on previously-published works either in our journal or elsewhere. We are also moving to an online submission system, which should be up and running by the end of the year, if not sooner.

Because Korean Studies is such a broad area journal we will continue to be open to publishing manuscripts from various disciplines that cover Korean studies. But one area I see us publishing more on moving forward is the growing area of Korean-American or simply “Koreans abroad” types of research. For instance, studies on Korean immigrant history to places like the Americas, Europe, or Australia/New Zealand are particularly interesting. “Race” relations and how Koreans have assimilated/acclimated to new environments are also highly pertinent, especially given that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the famous Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles, California.


Korean Studies Vol 40 cover

About the Journal

Korean Studies, edited at the University of Hawai‘i Center for Korean Studies, seeks to further scholarship on Korea by providing a forum for discourse on timely subjects, and addresses a variety of scholarly topics through interdisciplinary and multicultural articles, book reviews, and essays in the humanities and social sciences. All scholarly articles on Korea and the Korean community abroad are welcomed, including topics of interest to the specialist and nonspecialist alike.

Subscriptions

Individual and institutional subscriptions available through UH Press.

Palapala: a journal for Hawaiian language and literature – Volume 1, Issue 1 (2017)

PalapalaThe University of Hawai‘i Press is proud to publish a new, open-access resource for Hawaiian scholars, Palapala: a journal for Hawaiian language and literatureIt is the first peer-reviewed Hawaiian language journal to be published exclusively online.

The entirety of Palapala volume 1, issue 1, which includes contemporary research in both Hawaiian and English, is available for free through UH library’s ScholarSpace:

No Palapala / About Palapala

  • Editors’ introduction (Keola Donaghy, ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui, Kapali Lyon, ‘Ōiwi Parker Jones, Hiapokeikikāne K. Perreira)

Nā ‘Atikala Noi‘i Hou / New Research

Continue reading “Palapala: a journal for Hawaiian language and literature – Volume 1, Issue 1 (2017)”

Biography Vol. 39 No. 4 (2016)

This image of Stan Schab, managing editor of Biography from 1994—2016, accompanies the announcement for the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Service, which he received in 2007.

This quarter’s issue says farewell to retiring managing editor Stan Schab and welcomes new managing editor Anjoli Roy.

Read the special section for free online at Project MUSE: 

Editors’ Note (Free)

Tributes to Stan Schab (Free)

With words from editors and contributors Craig Howes, Cynthia G. Franklin, John David Zuern, Leigh Gilmore, Sidonie Smith, Gillian Whitlock, Aiko Yamashiro, and Anjoli Roy

Welcome to Anjoli Roy (free)

From Craig Howes, Cynthia G. Franklin, and  John David Zuern

Articles

  • Digression, Slavery, and Failing to Return in the Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke
    by Michael A. Chaney
  • Making and Unmaking: Child-Soldier Memoirs and Human Rights Readers
    by Maureen Moynagh

International year in review

…We hope that the feature debuting in this issue, the International Year in Review, will help begin a process that will lead to more books, articles, essays, and dissertations from an even wider variety of languages appearing in our critical bibliography. (From Editors’ Note)

  • International Year in Review: Introduction
    by John David Zuern
  • Pictures at an Exhibition: The Year in Australia
    by Gillian Whitlock
  • Biography in Austria, a Selection: The Year in Austria
    by Wilhelm Hemecker and David Osterle
  • Public Lives as Personal Assets, the Trial of Biography: The Year in Brazil
    by Sergio da Silva Barcellos
  • Trust Reconciliation in Life Writing: The Year in Canada
    by Alana Bell
  • Nostalgia for Republican China: The Year in China
    by Chen Shen
  • Old Traditions and New Experiments: The Year in Finland

Plus more from the year in review and book reviews. Continue reading “Biography Vol. 39 No. 4 (2016)”

Call for Papers: Biography special issue

Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly seeks papers for an upcoming special issue tentatively titled, Political Biographies in Literature and Cinema.

From the editors at the Center for Biographical Research:

To what extent do biographies promote or question the biographee’s political values? What are the limitations of prevailing assumptions (popular and/or academic) about biography’s relationship with history? What models of the political subject do biographies of political figures presuppose, and with what consequences? Articles of general relevance, as well as specific case studies of print or film biographies, are welcome in this special number of Biography, An Interdisciplinary Quarterly on political biographies in literature and cinema.

bio-39-3-c1-blogAbstracts of 250-500 words for projected manuscripts of 6,000-8,000 words may be submitted electronically by April 15, 2017. Click here for complete submission guidelines.

Subscribe to Biography through UH Press or browse full-text issues online via Project MUSE.

Click here for advertising information.

Red Peonies: Two Novellas of China (MĀNOA 28:2)

From this issue: Duplication, Image 5 , 2003 by Xing Danwen.

Red Peonies is the first English translation of The Woman Liu and The Woman Yang—two novellas by Chinese writer Zhang Yihe.

In 1970, when she was 28, Zhang was convicted of being a counter-revolutionary and sentenced to two decades in a remote prison labor camp. With empathy and grace, Zhang tells the stories of Liu Yueying and Yang Fenfang, two women she met at the camp.

Of her novellas, Zhang says, “They are not about politics or the system but about the tragic destinies of these young female prisoners.” Continue reading “Red Peonies: Two Novellas of China (MĀNOA 28:2)”

Visit UH Press and MĀNOA at AWP Booth 791

MANOA editor Frank Stewart
MANOA editor and UH Manoa faculty member Frank Stewart

Stop by and say aloha to editors of MĀNOA: A Pacific Journal of International Writing and peruse University of Hawai`i Press publications at February’s Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Washington, DC.

Editors at booth 791 will have MĀNOA‘s latest issues, UH Press books and journals, and information on the University of Hawai`i English Department creative writing program. The book fair opens on the morning of Thursday, February 9 and closes the afternoon of Saturday, February 11.

Click here to read AWP Book Fair Frequently Asked Questions.

Assistant editor of MANOA and UH Manoa grad Noah Perales-Estoesta
Assistant editor of MANOA and UH Manoa grad Noah Perales-Estoesta

The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 29 no. 1 (2017)

From artist Lisa Reihana featured in this issue. Dandy, 2007. Countering stereotypical depictions of Māori masculinity, strength, and prowess that focus on physical accomplishments on the battlefield or rugby playgrounds, Reihana’s Dandy, with full-face moko (tattoo) and Victorian attire, asserts a quietly confident sense of elegance and poise.

This issue of The Contemporary Pacific features a look at public murals in a Kanaka Maoli context, political reviews, the work of artist Lisa Reihana, book and media reviews, and the following articles:

  • Walls of Empowerment: Reading Public Murals in a Kanaka Maoli Context by A Mārata Ketekiri Tamaira
  • Traveling Houses: Preforming Diasporic Relationships in Europe by A-Chr (Tina) Engels-Schwarzpaul
  • CEDAW Smokescreens: Gender Politics in Contemporary Tonga by Helen Lee

Continue reading “The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 29 no. 1 (2017)”

The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 28 no. 2 (2017)

From artist Lisa Reihana featured in this issue. Dandy, 2007. Countering stereotypical depictions of Māori masculinity, strength, and prowess that focus on physical accomplishments on the battlefield or rugby playgrounds, Reihana’s Dandy, with full-face moko (tattoo) and Victorian attire, asserts a quietly confident sense of elegance and poise.

This issue of The Contemporary Pacific features a look at public murals in a Kanaka Maoli context, political reviews, the work of artist Lisa Reihana, book and media reviews, and the following articles:

  • Walls of Empowerment: Reading Public Murals in a Kanaka Maoli Context by A Mārata Ketekiri Tamaira
  • Traveling Houses: Preforming Diasporic Relationships in Europe by A-Chr (Tina) Engels-Schwarzpaul
  • CEDAW Smokescreens: Gender Politics in Contemporary Tonga by Helen Lee

Continue reading “The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 28 no. 2 (2017)”

Biography Vol. 39 No. 3 (2016)

From “Te Ao Hurihuri O Ngā Taonga Tuku Iho: The Evolving Worlds of Our Ancestral Treasures” in this issue. Drawings of Korokoro of Ngare Raumati by his brother Tuai (now in Birmingham University Special Collaborations CMS/ACC14 C2, and Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries GNZMMS 147).

This quarter’s special issue examines Indigenous Conversations about Biography with guest editors Alice Te Punga Somerville, Daniel Heath Justice, and Noelani Arista.

Editors’ Introduction

From “Kei Wareware”: Remembering Te Rauparaha in this issue. William Bambridge, Sketch of Te Rauparaha. Diary. Ref: QMS-0122-140A. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

This is a conversation about Indigenous lives, the ways we understand them, the ways we represent them, and the responsibilities that come from doing this work in a good way. And this is just a beginning. We are honored to welcome you to this special issue of Biography, and to the Indigenous scholars, artists, and visionaries who come together in community on the topic of Indigenous biography. Some of this diverse group of Indigenous thinkers came together in person in Mānoa Valley on the Hawaiian island of O‘ahu, traveling from the Indigenous territories claimed by New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States to take up the challenges, questions, concerns, and possibilities of representing Indigenous lives.

Continue reading “Biography Vol. 39 No. 3 (2016)”