[Note: This course also fulfills the HON 491 requirement for Honors students.]
In this course,
we will study literary, cultural and political mappings of Hawai‘i through a
range of genres, from literary texts to critical texts on experimental
geography, mo‘olelo of different places in Hawai‘i, environmental impact
statements, legal analyses of land and water rights, community sustainability
plans, archival resources, visual texts (maps, advertisements, political
cartoons), a developer’s petition for land use rezoning, and community
activists’ oral testimonies. If
mapping is often a colonial enterprise by which administrators, scholars and
artists have made territorial claims, then we will use a cultural studies
approach to unmap the multiply layered narratives through which land in Hawai‘i
is represented. We will consider
the colonial implications of these mappings as well as the ways that Kanaka
Maoli oral maps and contemporary anticolonial mapping projects make visible the
material effects of the U.S. occupation of Hawai‘i. We will be using the essays in AN ATLAS OF RADICAL
CARTOGRAPHY and EXPERIMENTAL GEOGRAPHY to help us to understand some
of the problematic assumptions of mapmaking as well as imaginative ways of
charting political transformation.
As we examine geographical, literary and thematic maps that show us how
the land is wrapped in relations of power, we will foreground the materiality
of land and the people it sustains, both often oddly obscured in popular
representations of land.
We will begin with Queen Lili‘uokalani’s autobiography
HAWAII’S STORY BY HAWAII’S QUEEN to establish the basis upon which Hawaiian
legal scholars argue that the Kingdom continues to exist under U.S. occupation.
We will then consider the ways that settler groups in Hawai‘i have historically
remapped Native lands. Contemporary literary texts by Linmark and Kawaharada
provide different kinds of “local” maps of urban spaces. We will also be
reading texts by Andrade and Nemeth that provide more complex views of the
multiple layers to any map, from mo‘olelo of land to the political changes that
have taken place in Kanaka Maoli and settler laws governing land use. These
texts will be read with essays from LAND AND POWER IN HAWAI‘I and ASIAN
SETTLER COLONIALISM: FROM LOCAL GOVERNANCE TO THE HABITS OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN
HAWAI‘I in order for us to understand the histories of land struggles in
Hawai‘i, the role of the Land Use Commission and the settler colonial context in
which these struggles occur. In the first half of the class, we will focus on
four key geographical sites: Hā‘ena, Kalihi, Waiāhole and Waikāne Valleys, and
Wai‘anae.
To prepare students for their own mapping projects on
other places, we will pay special attention to the fourth site: Lualualei
Valley in Wai‘anae. Tropic Land, LLC, has petitioned the State Land Use
Commission to rezone agricultural land in Lualualei Valley for urban use and
the construction of a light industrial park. We will be examining rhetorical
representations of land in the “Wai‘anae Sustainable Communities Plan” and the
developer’s environmental impact statement. The Concerned Elders of Wai‘anae,
together with KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Justice Alliance, have used
their own “Out, Out, Damned Spot!” mapping strategies to call for the removal
of the purple spot representing proposed development on the Plan’s land use
map. In studying this particular site, we will investigate the ways that developers
use maps rhetorically to represent land to serve their own interests and how
community activists also use maps to expose those interests and to support the
people who are sustained by these agricultural lands and sacred cultural sites.
The last third of the class will be spent on a
collaborative class research project that will culminate in an on-line
anthology of student essays on mapping sites in Hawai‘i. Students will select
their own sites and will coordinate research on mapping projects that highlight
the historical value of places and the political controversies that have
emerged from them. They will determine the overarching organizational structure
for the anthology and will engage in each step in the editorial process, from
researching online journal design to revising, copy-editing and indexing. This
anthology will be designed as a resource for ENG 100 courses that emphasize
place-based approaches.
Requirements:
- a 15-20 page research project (50%)
- a three-page project proposal with annotated bibliography (10%)
- one four-page paper (15%)
- weekly email letters to the class (10%)
- collaborative research on designing and editing the on-line anthology (15%)
Required Texts (available at Revolution Books): Gordon, et
al., AN ATLAS OF RADICAL CARTOGRAPHY; Thompson, ed., EXPERIMENTAL
GEOGRAPHY; Queen Lili‘uokalani, HAWAII’S STORY BY HAWAII’S QUEEN; Linmark,
ROLLING THE R’S; Kawaharada, STORIED LANDSCAPES; Andrade, Carlos, HĀ‘ENA:
THROUGH THE EYES OF THE ANCESTORS; Summer Kaimalia Nemeth, ALOHA ‘ĀINA, KA‘ENA POINT;
Fujikane and Okamura, ASIAN SETTLER COLONIALISM: FROM LOCAL GOVERNANCE TO THE
HABITS OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN HAWAI‘I.
A course reader will include essays by Kamana Beamer
and Kaeo Duarte, Katrina-Ann R. Kapā‘anaokalāokeola Nākoa Oliveira, Karen Kosasa,
Eric Estuar Reyes, Keanu Sai, Ida Yoshinaga, Cristina Bacchilega, J. B. Harley,
Sau-ling Wong, ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui, Haunani-Kay Trask, Jeff Chang, Barry
Nakamura, D. R. K. Herman, Trevor Paglen, Vivien Lee, Charlie Reppun, Noelani
Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua and others.