Brandy Nālani McDougall

Associate Professor

Degree

PhD University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Area of Interest

Indigenous Literatures and Critical Theory

American imperialism in the Pacific

Indigenous Rights/Sovereignty Movements

Biography

From Kula, Maui, Brandy Nālani McDougall, is of Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Hawaiʻi, Maui, and Kauaʻi lineages), Chinese and Scottish descent. She is the author of a poetry collection, The Salt-Wind, Ka Makani Paʻakai (Kuleana ʻŌiwi Press 2008) and the co-editor of Huihui: Navigating Art and Literature in the Pacific, an anthology focused on Pacific aesthetics and rhetorics (University of Hawaiʻi Press 2014).  A former Mellon and Ford postdoctoral fellow, her monograph Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature (University of Arizona Press 2016) was awarded the 2017 Beatrice Medicine Award for Scholarship in American Indian Studies and a Ka Palapala Poʻokela Honorable Mention. Aside from her scholarship and poetry, McDougall is the co-founder of Ala Press, an independent press dedicated to publishing creative works by Indigenous Pacific Islanders. In addition, she currently serves on the American Quarterly board of managing editors as well as the board of the Pacific Writers’ Connection.

McDougall is an Associate Professor specializing in Indigenous Studies in the American Studies Department. Courses she teaches in American Studies include AMST 220: Introduction to Indigenous Studies; AMST 405: Indigenous Literature and Film; and AMST 620: Indigenous Identity. She received a College of Arts and Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award in 2017. She is on sabbatical leave for the 2017-18 academic year. Her current research focuses on the rhetorics and aesthetics of Indigenous women’s activist fashion within land/water protection movements.

Contact

brandynm@hawaii.edu
Moore Hall 333
(808) 956-8247