On Potentials and Limits of Life Writing in Decolonial Scholarship

February 27, 12:00pm - 1:15pm
Mānoa Campus, Kuykendall 410 Add to Calendar

In this panel, Gonzalez and Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua will offer reflections toward decolonial uses of life writing, drawing on their use of interviews and ethnography in Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai'i and the Philippines (Duke UP, 2013) and The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School (U of Minnesota, 2013), respectively. We will discuss examples in our research and writing process where writing about lives enabled us to better theorize, and also complicated and/or limited what we were able to write about. Finally, we will discuss our own locations, and how our lives are tied up in these stories and analyses.

Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez is an Associate Professor of American Studies, Director of the Honor’s Program, and also currently serves as Chair of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Council at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa. Her research and teaching are focused on studies of tourism and militarism, transnational cultural studies, feminist theory, postcolonial studies, Asian American cultural and literary studies, empire, gendered labor, and hospitality, and oral history.

Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua is an Associate Professor of Indigenous and Hawaiian politics, and currently serves as the Undergraduate Chair of the Political Science Department. She uses life-writing in her teaching and research to consider issues of indigenous resurgence, social movements, settler colonialism, and decolonial futures.


Event Sponsor
Center for Biographical Research, Mānoa Campus

More Information
(808) 956-3774, biograph@hawaii.edu, http://www.facebook.com/CBRHawaii

Share by email