CALL LATELY #12
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CALL LATELY #12
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CALL LATELY #12<!–
CALL LATELY #12
(2024) subscribe to CALL
{ news to be proud of }
Graduating Asian Studies BA Student Wins $90,000 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship
Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, an independent journalist who fled political persecution in Myanmar will be finishing his BA from the Department of Asian Studies this summer. He will be joining the Department of Government at Cornell University as a Ph.D. student this coming fall. Hlaing has also won a highly competitive Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, which provides him with $90,000 in funding for graduate school. READ MORE
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AI in the Humanities. A First at UHM.
In Fall 2024 the Department of Religions & Ancient Civilizations (RLAC) will be offering two pilot classes that use an Instructional AI software interface called Packback. REL 300 (Myth, Religion, and Society) will be taught by Jonathan Pettit, and REL 207 (Understanding Buddhism) will be taught by Michel Mohr. This Instructional AI package functions like a personal tutor for all written assignments and should contribute to improving student writing and critical thinking skills.
“Despite the considerable hype about Generative AI and the competition to monetize these tools, educators do not want students to rely on machines to write their papers. They wish to encourage students to develop their authentic voices and to articulate them in compelling ways. What is needed is to spend more time connecting with students and discussing their ideas rather than focusing on corrective feedback. This is what Instructional AI promotes, by providing a sort of digital TA who gives feedback in real-time but does not produce content. Offering this opportunity to students who declare a major in RLAC may inspire the whole of CALL to adopt this innovative approach to higher education.” Michel Mohr, RLAC Chair
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UH researchers uncover rare Japanese scroll set in Honolulu
A three-year collaboration between UHM faculty and students in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL), scholars in Japan, and the Honolulu Museum of Art has borne fruit: a bilingual cross-platform publication that focuses on 18th century scrolls recently discovered inside a collection at the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA).[READ MORE]
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Art History alum named as the 9th Curator of the White House
Donna Hayashi Smith (art history BA, 1990) has been named as the 9th Curator of the White House. Her experience in the Curator’s Office, her passion for history, and her dedication to preserving the legacy of the White House make her an ideal fit for this prestigious role. Hayashi Smith is the first Asian-American to hold the position and oversees the stewardship and care of approximately 60,000 objects, ranging from fine art to furniture to china. READ MORE
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Director of Center for Southeast Asian Studies Awarded Fulbright
Professor Miriam Stark, Director of Center for Southeast Asian Studies, a specialist in Cambodian anthropology and archaeology has earned a Fulbright fellowship. She will spend two weeks from late April to mid May 2024 at the Royal University of Phnom Penh to complete an academic capacity-building and program evaluation project for the faculty of social sciences and humanities. READ MORE
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Two PBS Hawai‘i Features on the Department of Music
UH Band 100th Anniversary [ WATCH VIDEO ]
Dean Taba and the UH Jazz Ensemble [ WATCH VIDEO ]
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BA Alum of Classics Appointed to UH Board of Regents
Joshua Faumuina has been appointed by Gov. Josh Green to the UH Board of Regents (BOR) for a two-year term as the board’s student regent. Green made the announcement on June 28. Faumuina earned an associate of science in natural science from Kapiʻolani Community College in 2016, a bachelor of arts in classics from UH Mānoa in 2022, and expects to receive his juris doctor from the UH Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law in 2026. MORE INFO
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Korean Language Flagship Center Secures Another 4-year $1.3 Million Grant
This spring, the Korean Language Flagship Center (KLFC) secured $1.3 million to advance Korean language education. On May 1, the Defense Language National Language Education Office announced Flagship programs awarded a four-year grant. KLFC is the sole Korean language Flagship program bestowed the competitive grant and is one of just 19 language Flagship programs nationwide. READ MORE
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UH Mānoa Kabuki Performers Head to Japan!
Following a triumphant run at Kennedy Theatre, cast and crew of UHM’s kabuki production, The Maiden Benten and the Bandits of the White Waves are on their way to the birthplace of kabuki to perform. This groundbreaking endeavor marks the first-ever invitation for a UH Mānoa kabuki to perform in Japan.
The invitation was covered by all three local TV stations picked up the story. [KHON clip]
The journey to Japan was made possible through an invitation from government officials in Gifu City, known for its regional kabuki heritage. The UHM cast will take center stage at Gifu Seiryū Bunka Plaza in Gifu City on June 1, followed by a performance at the historic Aioi-za in Mizunami on June 2. both of which are already sold out. [READ MORE]
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Assistant Professors to Join CALL
Gillian Bogart / Department of Asian Studies
Bogart holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from UC Santa Cruz. Her research in Indonesia has focused on more-than-human political economies and multispecies alliances that figure prominently in Indonesian farming and fishing communities’ attempts to resist state projects of expropriation and control. More broadly, her research agenda examines the ways conservation and development projects are intertwined and form part of contemporary modes of governance in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and across the globe. She has been an American Fellow of the American Association of University Women and a Chancellor’s Fellow in the UCSC Department of Anthropology and was a founding member of the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions at UCSC.
Daisy Church / ACM: The School of Cinematic Arts (Animation)
Church received her MFA in Animation and Digital Arts from the University of Southern California. She has many years of industry experience as a character animation artist, director, and producer, working for companies such as Disney, Nickelodeon, and MTV.
Kaili Chun / Department of Art & Art History (Kanaka Maoli/Native Hawaiian Visual Art)
Chun is a sculptor and installation artist. She received her AB (Bachelor of Arts) degree in Architecture from Princeton University, during which time she also studied with renowned ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu; a MFA from UHM; and an apprenticeship with master canoe builder and woodworker Wright Elemakule Bowman, Sr.
Joseph Han / Department of English (Creative Writing)
Han was born in Korea and raised in Hawaiʻi. He is an editor for the West region of Joyland magazine, and a recipient of a Kundiman Fellowship in Fiction. His writing has appeared in Nat.Brut, Catapult, Pleiades Magazine, Platypus Press Shorts, and McSweeney’s. He received a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
Sam Ikehara / Department of American Studies (Transpacific Studies)
Ikehara writes and teaches about race, the environment, and legacies of war. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. From 2023 to 2025, she is a UC President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Youngoh Jung / Department of American Studies (Korean Diaspora)
Jung is completing his Ph.D. at UC San Diego’s History Department with a Graduate Specialization in Critical Gender Studies. A scholar of Asian American Studies, his current project focuses on transpacific militarism and the Korean diaspora. His dissertation, “Unsettling Militancy: Rethinking the Korean Diaspora in the Militarized Transpacific,” examines the anti-imperial struggles of radical diasporic Koreans in the first half of the twentieth century in Hawaiʻi, the US, and in US-occupied Korea. Recipient of a Korea Foundation Fellowship for Postdoctoral Research, he will pursue his archival research as a fellow at the UH Center for Korean Studies in AY 2024-25.
Yuan-Yu Kuan / Department of Music (Ethnomusicology)
Trained as a concert artist of erhu, Kuan completed his Ph.D. in 2020 from the UHM. He has taught at several Taiwanese universities, including the Music Department of National Tsing Hua University and the College of Indigenous Studies at National Dong Hwa University. His research and publications focus on the intercultural exchange of music among Indigenous peoples of island communities in Taiwan, Ryūkyū (Okinawa), and Hawaiʻi.
Leah Pappas / Department of Linguistics (Austronesian Languages)
Pappas is a documentary linguist who studies Austronesian languages to understand how the environment and culture influence language and gesture. Her primary goal is to increase the available audiovisual documentation on the languages of eastern Indonesia, one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the world. Pappas received her Ph.D. from The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her work has been funded by the Bilinski Foundation, the Endangered Language Documentation Programme, and the National Science Foundation.
Alec Schumacker / Department of Music (Choral)
Schumacker completed his DMA in Choral Conducting at the University of Miami, where he studied with Joshua Habermann and Karen Kennedy. An award-winning composer and arranger, his choral music is published by Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Alliance Music Publications, earthsongs, and World Projects. He joins UHM after having served on the faculty of Hawaii Pacific University for the past seven years.
Tammy Tabe / Department of Pacific Island Studies (Environmental Humanities and Environmental Justice)
Tabe is a Pacific Islands anthropologist who has worked widely in the Pacific Islands, specifically in Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tuvalu, and Kiribati on marine protected areas, ecosystem-based adaptation, gender inequality, historical relocations of Pacific Islands people, identity and diaspora, and climate change-induced migration and displacement. She received her MA in Pacific Islands Studies from UHM (2011) and her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Bergen (2016). Tabe maintains broad research interests including the role of migration as an adaptation strategy to climate change.
Joshua Tavares / Department of Theatre & Dance (Acting)
Tavares is a Kanaka Maoli artist from Hōnaunau, Kona, Hawaiʻi Island. He is a multitalented actor, singer, dancer, writer, director, and educator. Excited to join the Department of Theatre and Dance as an Assistant Professor of Acting, he completes his MFA in Acting and Hana Keaka (Hawaiian Theatre) this May 2024.
Maika’i Tubbs / Department of Art & Art History (Kanaka Maoli/Native Hawaiian Visual Art)
Tubbs received his BFA from UHM and his MFA from Parsons The New School for Design. His work has been shown in Hawai‘i, Washington D.C., Canada, Japan and Germany. Tubbs utilizes found detritus to create sculptures and installations around themes of obsolescence, consumption, and ecology. He regards discarded objects as untapped resources and transforms them to reveal a world of hidden, limitless potential. His process-oriented work reflects honest observations of unnatural familiarity influenced by the blurred boundaries between organic and artificial life.
Ron Vave / Department of Pacific Islands Studies (Ocean Governance & Marine Resources)
Vave is an iTaukei (indigenous Fijian) who has worked for the University of the South Pacific in Fiji between 2000 to 2014 where he was involved in training on natural resource governance and monitoring as part of the Locally Managed Marine Area (LMMA) network across seven countries in the Indo-Pacific region. He completed his PhD in Marine biology at the University of Hawaiˈi at Manoā in December 2021, where he researched the funerals of indigenous Fijians and recently completed a two year Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the East Carolina University. His interdisciplinary PhD research sought to determine how the cultural practice of indigenous Fijian funerals in Fiji influences and affects Social and Ecological resilience.
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New CALL Assistant Dean
We are happy to welcome Andrea Berez-Kroeker as our incoming Associate Dean of Academic Personnel and Operation effective September 1, 2024. Prior to joining the Dean’s Office, Dr. Berez-Kroeker was a Professor in the Department of Linguistics since 2011, serving as as Department Chair and Chair of Graduate Studies. Her research and teaching specialization is endangered language documentation, and she has supported Indigenous language activists in Alaska, Canada, Hawaiʻi, Guåhan, and Papua New Guinea.
Professor Berez-Kroeker has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as the co-edited Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management (MIT Press, 2022) and Language Contact and Change in the Americas (John Benjamins, 2016). She has been the recipient of over $1.3M in extramural research funding, and in 2019 she was awarded the Early Career Award by the Linguistic Society of America. Prior to her work in Linguistics, Dr. Berez-Kroeker earned an MFA in visual art and taught sculpture and drawing at the university level for several years.
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UH Endowment for the Humanities Summer 2024 Research Awards
Betsy Gilliland, Second Language Studies
Atsushi Hasegawa, East Asian Languages & Literatures
Rambas Lamb, Religions & Ancient Civilizations
Jonathan Pettit, Religions & Ancient Civilizations
Shawn Spangler, Art & Art History
Dongping Zheng, Second Language Studies
In Memoriam
The Passing of Two Trailblazing Korean Historians
Hugh Hi-Woong Kang was a scholar of ancient and medieval Korea. He was one of the first Korean historians to become a faculty member in a history department in the U.S. when he joined UHM’s Department of History in 1965. Yong-ho Ch’oe, who joined the history faculty in 1970, was a scholar of Korean history and Korean American history, as well as an early advocate of Korean studies. Together, Kang and Ch’oe helped UH Mānoa become the first university in the U.S. to grant a PhD in Korean history.
MORE ABOUT KANG / MORE ABOUT CH’OE
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Chung-ying Cheng (1935-2024): A Life Dedicated to East-West Scholarship
In the fall of 1963, Professor Cheng joined the UHM’s Department of Philosophy. Describing him solely as a specialist in Chinese Philosophy would be an understatement since his mastery extends across all Chinese schools of thought, both ancient and modern, including Buddhism. He has also made significant contributions to American philosophy, metaphysics, comparative philosophy, and philosophy of hermeneutics (he pioneered onto-hermeneutics). Professor Cheng served as the founding editor of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy. MORE ABOUT CHENG
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