Throughout the Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Atlantic Ocean, Taro has embodied many stories, many uses, and many instances of cultivation, consumption, and care for one’s environment. It is with this centrality that we think through the care we show – the stories we tell and the many mediums they follow, the questions we ponder through craft and on stage, the sentiments we trade in languages far and close to one another. In the humanities, and all they touch, the centering of our environment – of green and blue connections to place and one another – becomes a more and more vital reconciliation and step to the world we wish to see tomorrow. Through this initiative, we are led by Asian American and Pacific Islander voices to ask how a more just and vibrant future might take shape.
Our Approach
There are many names for Colocasia esculenta. In Korean, 토란, or Toran, is the Earth Egg, with its roots used for medicinal purposes and stems for midsummer soups. In Palau, one may hear the proverb a mesei a delal a telid, translating to “a taro field is the mother of life.” In the Philippines, laing and kalamay gabi adorn household tables as dinners and desserts.
Here, in Hawai’i, it is kalo. It is the first child of Wākea and Ho‘ohōkūkalani, stillborn and grieved until its sprouts burst forth, nourishing forever the first human, Hāloa, a younger brother named in their memory and honor. Kalo flourishes in cultivated wetlands, or loʻi, as well as upland gardens, representing a reciprocal relationship where the land nourishes those who care for it.
The Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice Hub at UH Manoa is facilitated through two units within the College of Arts, Languages and Letters – the Department of Asian Studies and the Center for Pacific Islands Studies.
This hub serves as a convener for pedagogical design, a host for burgeoning environmental humanities scholarship, and a network for the next generation of students to build their professional acumen for a dynamic and community-engaged career. With a special emphasis on the expansion and interconnection of AAPI Studies through environmental humanities lenses, the program centers the interconnected histories and futures of Asia, Oceania, and America.
As such, we recognize the space we host ourselves in, on the ahupua’a of Waikīkī, the moku of Kona, and the mokupuni of Oʻahu as crucial to how we study and engage.
This hub brings together the many communities that comprise the University of Hawai’i system, and reaches beyond to cultivate a space for scholars, activists, and community members to investigate AAPI identities, histories, roles, actions, and experiences as they relate to environmental justice, and to co-produce pathways for meaningful change within and beyond the classroom.