Monica C. LaBriola

Assistant Professor
Affiliate Faculty, Center for Pacific Island Studies
Affiliate Faculty, Indigenous Politics
Convener, Women in Pacific Studies (WiPS) Graduate Student Fellowship
Primary Fields: Pacific/Oceania, Imperialism & Colonialism, Gender & Sexuality
Other Fields: Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Women and Gender, Ethnographic History, Oral Traditions, Pacific Historiography

Office: Sakamaki B417
Email: labriola@hawaii.edu | Phone: (808) 956-7675
Accepting new graduate students? Depends; contact me to discuss

BA University of California, Berkeley, 1999; MA, PhD Hawaiʻi, 2006, 2013

Background

Monica C. LaBriola earned a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies at UC Berkeley (1999), an MA in Pacific Islands Studies at UH Mānoa (2006), and a PhD in Pacific Islands History, also at UH Mānoa (2013). She maintains an active research agenda emphasizing oral traditions, women and gender, cross-cultural encounter, and historiography in the geographic region known as Micronesia in northern Oceania, with a focus on the Marshall Islands. She is also the founder and co-convener of the Women in Pacific Studies (WiPS) Graduate Student Fellowship, a supportive professionalization space for graduate students in Pacific studies and related fields. Her first monograph, tentatively titled Our Eyes Advise Us: Marshall Islanders Navigating Disease, Climate, and Colonial Violence in the Nineteenth Century, is near completion. Dr. LaBriola was the recipient of the inaugural Professor Brij V. Lal Award for the best paper published in The Contemporary Pacific for 2023, was a 2023 recipient of the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents Medal for Excellence in Teaching, and earned a UH – West Oʻahu Frances Davis Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2017. Dr. LaBriola is currently a member of the editor board of The Contemporary Pacific and the Journal of Pacific History and serves on the Pacific History Association executive committee. She has previously served as the associate editor for The Contemporary Pacific and as the series editor for the Teaching Oceania Series.

Courses Offered

  • HIST 288: Oceania Survey
  • HIST 366: Women in Oceania
  • HIST 481: Oceania I
  • HIST/PACS 675: Topics: Women in Oceania
  • HIST/PACS 675: Topics: Micronesia

Representative Publications

In preparation: Our Eyes Advise Us: Marshall Islanders Navigating Disease, Climate, and Colonial Violence in the Nineteenth Century

“Marshallese Women and Oral Traditions: Navigating a Future for Pacific History.” The Contemporary Pacific 35, no. 1-2 (2023): 32-59. https://doi.org/10.1353/cp.2023.a924451

Primary Author with Julianne Walsh, “Teaching Oceania: Creating Pedagogical Resources for Undergraduates in Pacific Studies,” The Contemporary Pacific 32:1. https://doi.org/10.1353/cp.2020.0009

“Planting Islands: Marshall Islanders Shaping Land, Power, and History,” The Journal of Pacific History 54:2. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2019.1585233

“Marshall Islands Political Review,” 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018, The Contemporary Pacific 31:1 (2019)

Co-Author, “Militarism and Nuclear Testing in the Pacific,” Teaching Oceania Series, Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (2018, 2016)

Review, Breaking the Shell: Voyaging from Nuclear Refugees to People of the Sea in the Marshall Islands by Joseph Genz, The Journal of Pacific History (2019)

Review, American History Unbound: Asians and Pacific Islanders by Gary Y. Okihiro, and Domination and Resistance: The United States and the Marshall Islands during the Cold War by Martha Smith-Norris. Journal of World History 28:3 (2018): 649–654. https://doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2017.0045