Center for Pacific Island Studies

David Hanlon

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Professor and Director, Center for Pacific Islands Studies; PhD University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (1984)

e-mail: hanlon@hawaii.edu

David Hanlon first came to the Pacific in 1970 with the Peace Corps. He and his wife Kathy served on the island of Pohnpei until 1973 as English language teachers in the village of Wone. They returned to the island in 1977 and taught at the Community College of Micronesia in Kolonia Town until 1980. While on island, Dr Hanlon served as an advisor to the local historic preservation program and conducted an archaeological inventory of historic properties in the greater Kolonia area. He holds an MA degree in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a doctorate in Pacific Islands history from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

David Hanlon is the author of the award-winning book Upon a Stone Altar: A History of the Island of Pohnpei to 1890 and the more recent Remaking Micronesia: Discourses Over Development in a Pacific Territory, 1844-1982. He is also the co-editor with Geoffrey M White of Voyaging Through the Contemporary Pacific. Dr Hanlon was one of the founders of The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Island Affairs and served as its editor for seven years before becoming editor of the Pacific Islands Monograph Series. He also sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Pacific History and the University of Hawaii Press. His research interests include Micronesia, missionization, development, Pacific historiography, and cross-cultural encounters; he is currently working on a biography of Tosiwo Nakayama, the first president of the Federated States of Micronesia. He maintains strong commitment to graduate education and to mentoring students from the Pacific Islands region and has been honored twice by the university as the recipient of UH Presidential and Board of Regents awards for excellence in teaching. He succeeded Robert C Kiste as director of the center in August of 2002.

Selected publications

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Forthcoming	"'You Did What, Mr. President!' Trying to Write a Life History of Tosiwo Nakayama," in Brij V. Lal,, ed., Telling Pacific Lives: Proceedings from the Pacific History Association Workshop, 5-7 December 2005. Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.
2000	Voyaging Through the Contemporary Pacific, co-edited with Geoffrey M White. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
1998	Remaking Micronesia: Discourses Over Development in a Pacific Territory, 1944–1982. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
1988	Upon A Stone Altar: A History of the Island of Pohnpei to 1890. Pacific Islands Monograph Series 5. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. [Winner of the 1989 American Society of Ethnohistory’s Erminie Wheeler-Voeglin Prize for the outstanding book in the field of ethnohistory published in the preceding year.]

Monographs - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1981	From Mesenieng to Kolonia: An Archaeological Survey of Historic Kolonia. Micronesian Archaeological Survey Report 5. Saipan: Trust Territory Government Press.

Articles - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

2005	On Francis X. Hezel’s The First Taint of Civilization. In Texts and Contexts: Reflections in Pacific Islands Historiography, edited by Doug Munro and Brij V Lal, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
2004	Wone Sohte Lohdi: History and Place on Pohnpei. In Pacific Places, Pacific Histories: Essays in Honor of Robert C. Kiste, edited by Brij V Lal, 195–215. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
2003	Beyond “the English Method of Tattooing”: Decentering the Practice of History in Oceania. In Back to the Future: Decolonizing Pacific Studies, edited by Vilsoni Hereniko and Terence Wesley-Smith. Special issue of The Contemporary Pacific 15:19–40.
2001	Converting Pasts and Presents: Reflections on Histories of Missionary Enterprises in the Pacific. In Pacific Lives, Pacific Places: Changing Boundaries in Pacific History, edited by Brij V Lal and Peter Hempenstall, 143–154. Canberra: Coombs Academic Publishing.
2000	Introduction (with Geoffrey M White). In Voyaging Through the Contemporary Pacific, edited by David Hanlon and Geoffrey M White, 1–22. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
1999	The Chill of History: The Experience, Emotion and Changing Politics of Archival Research in the Pacific. Archives and Manuscripts: The Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists 27 (1): 8–21.
1999	Magellan’s Chroniclers? American Anthropology’s History in Micronesia. In American Anthropology and Micronesia, edited by Robert C Kiste and Mac Marshall, 53–79. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
1995	The End of History for the Edge of Paradise: Economic Development and the Compacts of Free Association in American Micronesia. In Colonial Inheritance: The Pacific Islands Since Independence, edited by Brij V Lal and Hank Nelson, 83–93. Brisbane: Pacific History Association.
1994	Patterns of Colonialism in Micronesia to 1942. In The History of the Pacific Islands in the Twentieth Century, edited by Kerry R Howe, Brij V Lal, and Robert C Kiste, 93–118. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press; Auckland: Allen & Unwin.
1994	Remaking Micronesia: A Reflection on the Cultural and Strategic Politics of Economic Development in American Micronesia, 1945–1968. In Dangerous Liaisons: A Festschrift for Greg Dening, edited by Donna Merwick, 135–156. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
1993	Sorcery, “Savage Memories,” and the Edge of Commensurability for History in the Pacific. In Pacific Islands History: Journeys and Transformations, edited by Brij V Lal, 107–128. Canberra: The Journal of Pacific History.
1993	Editor’s Introduction. The Contemporary Pacific 5:vii–ix.
1992	The Path Back to Pohnsakar: Luelen Bernart, His Book, and the Practice of History on Pohnpei. Isla: A Journal of Micronesian Studies 1 (1): 13–36.
1990	“The Pleasure of Speculation and Conjecture”: Early Euro-American Visions of Nan Madol and Their Relevance to Post-Modern Archaeological Investigations. In Recent Advances in Micronesian Archaeology: Proceedings of the Micronesian Archaeology Conference held on Guam from September 9–12, 1987, edited by Rosalind L Hunter-Anderson, 99–116. Special issue of Micronesica, Supplement 2 (October). Mangilao, Guam: University of Guam Press.
1989	Micronesia: Writing and Rewriting the Histories of a Nonentity. Pacific Studies 12 (2): 1–21.
1988	The Federated States of Micronesia: Unifying the Remnants (with William Eperiam). In Politics in Micronesia, vol 3, Politics of the Pacific Islands, edited by Ron Crocombe and Ahmed Ali, 85–106. Revised edition. Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific.
1988	Another Side of Henry Nanpei. Journal of Pacific History 23 (1): 36–51.
1984	God vs. Gods: The First Years of the Micronesian Mission on Ponape, 1852 to 1859. Journal of Pacific History 19 (1): 41–59.
1983	Introduction to Recent Soviet Works on the Pacific. Soviet Studies in History 21 (4): 5–13.
1983	The Federated States of Micronesia: Unifying the Remnants (with William Eperiam). In Politics in Micronesia, vol 3, Politics in the Pacific Islands, edited by Ron Crocombe and Ahmed Ali, 81–99. Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific.
1982	Myths, Strategies and Guilt in Micronesia. Perspectives [East-West Center, Honolulu] Summer: 24–27.

David Hanlon and Kanalu Young, affiliate faculty member at the UHM Center for Hawaiian Studies, at the Learning Oceania conference in 2003.