In this course, we will focus on hopeful narratives of climate change in order to engage in cultural studies approaches to global conditions. The texts I have selected foreground human relationships with the elements, often through narratives of love, whether it is be romantic love between elements, a people’s love for a mountain, the love for elements who are ancestors, or love between the elemental forms themselves that bring about natural phenomena like the formation of clouds. These forms of love represent a refusal to succumb to capital’s logic that we have passed an apocalyptic threshold of no return. As people all over the world stand for the elements against state and corporate devastation of the earth, we see that natural worlds being restored and flourishing. In my own work, I call this the “mapping of abundance”: a mapping that is attentive to the moments when love brings back or sustains the abundance of the earth. To map abundance is not a luxury but an urgent insistence on life. Envisioning and working toward abundance is a necessity in the face of human-induced climate change events.
Through reading these texts, we will engage in a cultural studies approach that locates these narratives in the material and political contexts in which they are written and read: public testimony on the rebuilding of Lahaina after the anthropogenic wildfires of 2023, the regreening of Kahoʻolawe, land stewardship training documents that teach us to read mele and oli (song and chant) in Hawaiʻi to assess, adapt to, and activate ourselves in relation to changes in the natural world. We will explore the power of these narratives to bring about an epistemological shift that can help us to see that seemingly catastrophic climate change events can be possibilities for renewed abundance.
REQUIREMENTS: Assignments and course requirements: 2 short writing assignments that will help to build toward your final research project (30%); two presentations, one on a critical reading assignment in relation to a primary text (10%) and one on the conference paper; one 7-page conference paper that outlines the objectives of the seminar paper with a bibliography of at least ten entries (10%); 15–20 page seminar paper that includes and builds on the conference paper (50%), attendance and participation.
REQUIRED TEXTS MAY INCLUDE:
1. Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele, Ka Honu Ola: ʻEliʻeli Kau Mai / The Living Earth: Descend,
Deepen the Revelation (2011)
2. The Kumulipo: A Hawaiian Creation Myth. Translated by Queen Liliʻuokalani.
3. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Remembering Our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea (2021)
4. Candace Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical
Settler Cartographies in Hawaiʻi (2021)
5. Moses Manu, Keaomelemele (1884).
6. Marie Alohalani Brown, Ka Poʻe Moʻo Akua: Hawaiian Reptilian Water Deities (2022) and
Solomon Enos’ Instagram narratives on Moʻo in the context of the Lahaina fires
7. Pualani Kanakaʻole Kanahele, Kekuhikuhipuuone Kealiikanakaoleohaililani, Huihui Kanahele-Mossman, Kalei Nuʻuhiwa, Kuʻulei Kanahele, and Honuaiākea Summit Group, Kīhoʻihoʻi Kānāwai: Restoring Kānāwai for Island Stewardship. Hilo, HI: Edith Kanakaʻole Foundation (2016)
8. Moses K. Nakuina, The Wind Gourd of Laʻamaomao (1902)
9. kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui, Joyce Pualani Warren, and Cristina Bacchilega, eds. An Ocean of Wonder: The Fantastic in the Pacific (2024).
10. Hōkūlani Aikau and Vernadette Gonzalez, eds., Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi (2019)
A course reader will complement the primary texts for the course.