“Curating a Decolonial Guide to Hawai‘i: The Detours Project” Lecture and Seminar by Prof. Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, ES Doctoral Alumna
Wed, February 27, 2019, 8:00 pm370 Dwinelle Hall, UC Berkeley
Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez, Associate Professor of American Studies, Honors Program Director, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
The Detours project takes seriously the power of form, and the reading practices and publics produced by the genre of the guidebook, which manifest the fantasy of Hawai‘i as an exotic island destination for the consumption of tourists. Detours deliberately perverts the guidebook to produce alternative narratives, tours, itineraries, mappings and images of the islands as well as concrete examples of how we can move from metaphors of decolonization to material practices and everyday acts of resistance. This presentation will describe the project and the political and intellectual foundations upon which it is based, the work and process of curating the contributions, and the vision and ethical responsibilities that guide it.
Bio: Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez is Associate Professor of American Studies and Director of the Honors Program at UH Mānoa. She is the author of Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai‘i and the Philippines, and co-editor, with Hokulani Aikau, of "Detours: A Decolonial Guide" (under contract with Duke University Press). She is also serving as an Associate Editor of the American Quarterly journal, and is currently finishing a monograph on Isabel Rosario Cooper, a mixed race vaudeville and film star infamous for being Douglas MacArthur's mistress. She earned her PhD from Berkeley's Ethnic Studies department with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality in 2004.
Event cosponsored by the Department of Ethnic Studies
Funding provided by the Chau Hoi Shuen Foundation Fund in Gender and Women's Studies