Hawaiian Studies - History

History

In Hawaii, the discipline of Hawaiian Studies evolved out of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and early 1970s, which saw growing self-awareness and radicalization of American Indians and Decolonization struggles around the world. Hawaiian Studies courses and then departments were established on campus around Hawaii. Thinkers like Franz Fanon, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Linda Tuhiwai Smith influence Hawaiian Studies.

While early Hawaiian Studies scholarship focused on the previously repressed histories and identities of Hawaiian groups within the context of the U.S., over time the field of study has expanded to encompass ontological/epistemological philosophy, transnationalism, comparative race studies and postmodernist/poststructuralist critiques. While pioneering thinkers relied on frameworks, theories and methodologies such as those found in the allied fields of sociology, history, literature and film, scholars in the field today utilize multidisciplinary as well as comparative perspectives, increasingly within an international or transnational context.

Professor Haunani Kay Trask became the first tenured professor in Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1986. She assisted Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, Jonathan Osorio and Kainalu Young in obtaining their doctorates on Hawaiian Studies topics and in becoming tenured professors in Hawaiian Studies. After years of battling, Gladys Kamakakuokalani Brandt and Trask were able to get funding to build a permanent home for the Center for Hawaiian Studies. It is now called the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies. The Center added two master's degree programs in Hawaiian Studies in 2005. The center is now part of the Hawaiʻinuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge.

The Hawaiian Studies program at the University of Hawaii at Hilo is centered more closely around the instruction of the Hawaiian language. In 1997, the Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language was established to complement its Hale Kuamoʻo.

The Hawaiian Studies program at the Brigham Young University Hawaii structures its instruction and research around perceived connections between Hawaiian culture and the Book of Mormon and other doctrinal beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.