Contact: craighow@hawaii.edu
Office hours:By appointment. I'm on campus a lot.
Craig Howes has been the Director of the Center for Biographical Research since 1997, the Co-Editor of Biography: An International Quarterly since 1994, and a Professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa since 1980. He has served as General Editor of the Biography Monographs Series, in affiliation with University of Hawaiʻi Press. The author of the article on “Life Writing” in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory (2022), he is the co-editor of Teaching Lifewriting Texts (MLA 2007), He has published many essays and reviews in the fields of life writing, literary theory, and Nineteenth Century English and American Literature, with a special emphasis on British Comic and Satiric Periodicals of the long 19th Century. His book Voices of the Vietnam POWs (Oxford 1993) was selected as a notable academic book by Choice magazine. One of the founders of the International Auto/Biography Association in Beijing in 1999, he initiated and has served as the manager of IABA listserv, now with over 1,700 subscribers, for twenty-five years. He has also served as Vice President (1996–1997) and President (1998–1999) of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.
He was the series scholar and a co-producer for Biography Hawai‘i, a television documentary series shown on PBS Hawaiʻi, and a coproducer of Aloha Shorts (2009–2013) a weekly program featuring Hawaiʻi writers, actors, and musicians for Hawaiʻi Public Radio. With Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio, he coedited The Value of Hawaiʻi (2010) and with Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua and Aiko Yamashiro, as well as Osorio, The Value of Hawaiʻi 3—Hulihia, the Turning (2020). He is active in Living History projects and other events related to Hawaiian History Month through the Hawaiʻi Pono’ī Foundation, and has been the principal humanities scholar, a consulting humanities scholars, the project director, and an institutional co-sponsor for many Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities projects.
Publications
Books
The Value of Hawaiʻi 3: Hulihia the Turning. Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Jonathan Kay Kamakawiwoʻole Osorio, and Aiko Yamashiro, co-editors. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2020. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/70171
The Best of Aloha Shorts. Sammie Choy and Phyllis S. K. Look, co-editors. Issue 112. Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge Press, 2018.
The Value of Hawai‘i: Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future. Jon Osorio co-editor. A Biography Monograph. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i UP, 2010. In fifth printing.
Honorable Mention. Excellence in Non-Fiction. Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards. Hawai‘i Book Publishers Association, 2011; Best Book About Hawai‘i. Readers’ Choice. “The Best of Honolulu: Literary.” Honolulu Weekly, August 17, 2011; Selected as common book, Hawai‘i Pacific University, 2011 and 2012.
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Teaching Life Writing Texts. Miriam Fuchs co-editor. Options for Teaching. New York: Modern Language Association, 2007.
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Voices of the Vietnam POWs: Witnesses to their Fight. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Named an Outstanding Academic Book in American History for 1995 by Choice
Television Documentaries
Series Scholar, Producer, and Executive Producer. Ka Hana Kapa. Dir. Joy Chong-Stannard. Script by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. 60 minutes. 2015.
Series Scholar, Producer, and Executive Producer. Biography Hawai‘i: Joseph Nāwahī. Dir. Joy Chong-Stannard. Script by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. 60 minutes. 2009.
Series Scholar, Producer, and Executive Producer. Biography Hawai‘i: Koji Ariyoshi. Dir. Joy Chong-Stannard. Script by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. 60 minutes. 2005.
Series Scholar, Producer, and Executive Producer. Biography Hawai‘i: Ruth Ke‘elikōlani. Dir. Joy Chong-Stannard. Script by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. 30 minute English version; 30 minute Hawaiian version. 2004.
Series Scholar, Producer, and Executive Producer. Biography Hawai‘i: Harriet Bouslog. Dir. Joy Chong-Stannard. Script by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. 60 minutes. 2003.
Series Scholar, Producer, and Executive Producer. Biography Hawai‘i: Maiki Aiu Lake. Dir. Joy Chong-Stannard. Script by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. 60 minutes. 2002. Nominated for Northern California, Nevada, and Hawai‘i Regional Emmy Award, 2003.
iii. Articles
“Afterword.” The Ethics of Life Writing. Ed. Paul John Eakin. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2004. 244–264.
“Asking Permission to Write: Human Subject Research.” Profession: 2011. Modern Language Association of America: 98–106.
“Afterword. History and Hopes—Life writing Pedagogy in the twenty-first Century.” Special Issue: Teaching Life Writing, Theory, Methodology, and Practice. A/B: Autobiography Studies, vol. 37, no. 3, 2022, pp. 519–532. Forthcoming in book form from Routledge 2024.
“Biography.” Research Methodologies for Auto/Biography Studies. Edited by Kate Douglas and Ashley Barnwell. Auto/Biography Studies Series, Routledge, 2019. pp. 61–67.
“Biography, Oral History, Autobiography: A Graduate Course.” Teaching Life Writing Texts. Options for Teaching. Miriam Fuchs and Craig Howes, eds. New York: Modern Language Association, 2007: 115–121.
“Documentary Biography as Social and Cultural History—The Case of Biography Hawaiʻi” Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies 8 (2017). Center for Life Writing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 2017.
“Doing Biography: Mediating between Life Writing Studies and Lives.” Auto/Biography and Mediation. Ed. Alfred Hornung. Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 2010: 3–14.
“Ethics and Literary Biography.” A Companion to Literary Biography. Richard Bradford, Ed. London: Blackwell, 2018: 123–142.
“For Philippe Lejeune.” European Journal of Life Writing. 7 (2018). 32–38. http://ejlw.eu/article/view/253
“Foreword” to Writing Life Writing: Narrative, History, Autobiography, by Paul John Eakin, Routledge 2020, pp. ix–xviii.
“‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and Elegiac Romance.” Southern Literary Journal 19 (1986): 68–78.
“Hawaii Through Western Eyes: Orientalism and Historical Fiction for Children.” The Lion and the Unicorn: A Critical Journal of Children's Literature. 11 (1987): 68–87. A shorter version is reprinted in Literature and Hawaii´s Children: Imagination: A Bridge to Magic Realms in the Humanities. Eds. Steven Curry and Cristina Bacchilega. Honolulu: Literature and Hawaii´s Children, 1988: 19–31.
“How's life? Auto/biography studies thirty years from here.” “What’s Next? The Futures of Auto/Biography Studies.” A Special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 32:2 (Spring 2017). 195–197.
“ʻI won't remember—for you’: What lifewriting criticism and theory could bring to the autobiographical writing classroom.” “Teaching Lives: Contemporary Pedagogies of Life Narrative.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 32:1 (Winter 2017). 111–115.
“Introduction.” With Miriam Fuchs. Teaching Life Writing Texts. Miriam Fuchs and Craig Howes, eds. Options for Teaching. New York: Modern Language Association, 2008: 1–19.
“Life Writing.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory. Edited by John Frow. Oxford UP, 2022. Also published online as part of The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Oxford UP, 2015—. Article published October 27, 2020.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.1146.
“Martin Amis, Mimetic Contracts, and Life Writing Pacts: A Story about 9/11.” Locating Life Stories: Beyond East-West Binaries in (Auto)biographical Studies. Maureen Perkins, ed. Honolulu: U of Hawai‘i P, 2012: 97–113.
“New York, New York.” Review Essay of Cities on a Hill: A Journey through Contemporary American Cultures, by Frances FitzGerald. Brick: A Journal of Reviews 33 (1988): 37–45. Rpt. in slightly different form in Chaminade Literary Review 2:1 (Fall 1988): 117–137.
“Pacifying Asia, Orienting the Pacific: What Work Can a Life Writing Region Do?” Special Issue on Locating Lives: Papers from the Inaugural Regional IABA Conference, IABA Asia-Pacific. Life Writing 14:4 (2017): 441–453.
“Pendennis and the Controversy on the ‘Dignity of Literature.’” Nineteenth Century Literature 41 (1986): 269–297. Rpt. in William Makepeace Thackeray. Harold Bloom, ed. New York: Chelsea, 1987: 233–253.
“Poe, Burke, and ‘Usher’: The Sublime and Rising Woman.” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance. 31 (1985): 173–189.
“Ranking for the Short Term, Ranking and the Long Haul.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 42:3 (2011): 346–350.
“Reflections on Life Narrative Studies, Past, Present, and Future: An Interview with Craig Howes.” IABA Student and New Scholar Network. May 8, 2019.
https://iabasns.wordpress.com/2019/05/08/reflections-on-life-narrative-studies-past-present-and-future-an-interview-with-craig-howes/?fbclid=IwAR3EEW3X9of3e-cy21-Z1k-MkQMANfSROa2Vwcxf_Lfa8J6lu7RLHyMN8XI
“Rhetorics of Attack: Bakhtin and the Aesthetics of Satire.” Genre 19 (1986): 215–245.
“Slow Lives: Micro-Traditions in American Biography and Autobiography.” In American Lives. Ed. Alfred Hornung. American Studies: A Monograph Series. Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 2013. 49-76.
“Talk, Write, Talk—Bobby Garwood, MIAs, and Conspiracy.” Soldier Talk: The Vietnam War in Oral Narrative. Eds. Michal Zeitlin and Paul Budra. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2004. 89¬–116.
“Translating Reynolds to the Pacific and Widening Victorian Studies.” Reynolds Reimagined: Studies in Authorship, Radicalism, and Genre, 1830-1870. Jennifer Conary and Mary L. Shannon, eds. Routledge, 2023: 285–301.
“Victorian Periodicals: Comic and Satiric.” Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals. London: Routledge, 2016. 318–327.
“A Visit With G. Bernard Shaw.” Brick: A Literary Journal. 82 (Winter 2009): 147–153. Reprinted as “Leon Edel and George Bernard Shaw.” The New Brick Reader. Tara Quinn, ed. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2013. 228–232. I was the interviewer and editor of Leon Edel’s remembrance.
“What Are We Turning From? Research and Ideology in Biography and Life Writing.” The Biographical Turn. Lives in History. Hans Renders, Binne de Haan, and Jonne Harmsma, eds. London: Routledge, 2016. 165–175.
Reviews and Reference Works
“Collective Biography.” Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Margaretta Jolly, ed. London: Chadwyck-Healy, 2001.
“Frances Cowley Burnand.” Encyclopedia of British Humorists: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese. 2 vols. Steven H. Gale, General Editor. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, Vol. 906. New York: Garland, 1996: 168–172.
“James Bond Stockdale.” Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment. Ed. Jonathan F. Vance. Boulder: ABC-CLIO, 2000. Reprint, Millerton, New York: Grey House Publishing, 2007.
“Leon Edel.” Encyclopedia of Life Writing. Margaretta Jolly, ed. London: Chadwyck-Healy, 2001.
“Mark Lemon.” Encyclopedia of British Humorists: Geoffrey Chaucer to John Cleese. 2 vols. Steven H. Gale, General Editor. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, Vol. 906. New York: Garland, 1996: 650–656.
“Operation Homecoming.” Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment. Ed. Jonathan F. Vance. Boulder: ABC-CLIO, 2000. Reprint, Millerton, New York: Grey House Publishing, 2007.
“Punch.” The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture. Ed. G. A. Cevasco. New York: Garland, 1993.
“Tom Hood.” Dictionary of National Biography: 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.
“Tom Taylor.” Dictionary of National Biography: 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004.
“Victorian Periodicals—comic and satiric.” Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Press, 1988.
“William Makepeace Thackeray.” British Children's Writers, 1800–1880. Ed. Meena Khorana. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol 163. Detroit and Washington: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1996. 297–306.
Fiction, Articles, and Reviews--Hawai‘i
“Idiom.” Bamboo Ridge: The Hawaii Writers' Quarterly 19 (1983): 33–36.
“Kira.” The Paper 2:3 (1983): 8–9.
“Pareau.” The Paper: Light. 3:3 (1985): 24–28.
“The Resurrection Man.” Passages to the Dream Shore: New Short Stories about Hawaii. Ed. Frank Stewart. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1987: 50–61. Rpt. in The Best of Honolulu Fiction. Eric Chock and Darrell Lum, eds. Honolulu: Bamboo Ridge Press, 1999: 107–118.
“Homage to Helm and Mitchell.” Review. Literary Arts Hawaii 73 (June 1984): 14. Rpt. as “Ho`iho`i Hou: A Tribute to George Helm and Kimo Mitchell.” Hawaii Review 16 (Fall 1984), 109–112.
“Introduction.” Hawai‘i Nei: Island Plays. By Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl. Honolulu: U of Hawai‘i P, 2002. ix-xxviii.
“MALAMA: Hawaiian Land and Water.” Review. Literary Arts Hawaii 80–81 (Spring/Summer 1986): 6–7. Rpt. Ka Huliau (Spring 1986): 10–11.
Areas of Interest
biography and life writing, 19th-century literature, literary theory, drama and performance, research methods, professional editing, Hawaiʻi literatures
Awards
University: Peter V. Garrod Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award, 2014; Hung Wo and Elizabeth Lau Ching Foundation Award for Faculty Service to the Community, 2005; Board of Regents' Medal for Excellence in Teaching, 1998; Presidential Citation for Meritorious Teaching 1986; College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature Excellence in Teaching Award 1986;
Community: Elliott P. Cades Award for Literature, 1994; Loretta Petrie Award for Service to the Hawaiʻi Literary Community. 2021.
Education
BA with Honors, Victoria College in the University of Toronto, 1977
PhD, Princeton University, 1980
Courses
Fall Semester 2024
- ENG-311: Autobiographical Writing
- ENG-333: 19th-C British Literature
Spring Semester 2024
- ENG-311: Autobiographical Writing
- ENG-361: Poetry
Fall Semester 2023
- ENG-362: Drama
- ENG-664: Biography
Spring Semester 2023
- ENG-361: Poetry
- ENG-764: Seminar in Life Writing: Life Writing and Translation
Fall Semester 2022
- ENG-311: Autobiographical Writing
- ENG-333: 19th-Centry British Literature