Ty P. Kawika Tengan

Associate Professor

Background
General Interests
Current Research
Selected Publications

Background: I am from Maui and have attended St. Anthony School, Wailuku (elementary and intermediate), Kamehameha School, Honolulu (high school), Dartmouth College, NH (B.A.), and the University of Hawai‘i, where I received my M.A. and Ph.D. (2003). I am Hawaiian, Okinawan, Portuguese, and German, and I am actively engaged as a scholar and community member in the struggles for Hawaiian cultural and political empowerment and self-determination. My dissertation looked at the intersection of gender and culture in the formation of identity in the Hale Mua, a group working to establish a cultural foundation for Hawaiian men through ritual, martial arts, and carving on the island of Maui. I am currently an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the departments of Ethnic Studies and Anthropology. I am also an affiliate faculty member of the International Cultural Studies Graduate Certificate Program (University of Hawai‘i/East-West Center), of which I am a certificate recipient (2000).

Research Interests:

My broad interests include ethnic studies, cultural anthropology, indigenous theory and methodology, colonialism, nationalism, identity formation, gender, masculinities, and cultural politics in Hawai‘i and the Pacific.

Current Research:

In addition to my ongoing work with the Hale Mua, I am also involved as a researcher in a Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum project entitled “Hui Panala‘au: Hawaiian Colonists, American Citizens,” a traveling exhibit and oral history project that received a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History. The exhibit tells the story of over 130 young men of Hawai‘i who “occupied” the islands in the equatorial Pacific between 1935-1942 as “colonists” for the U.S. The exhibit and the accompanying oral history project present vivid and unique perspectives on constructions of race, gender, and nation in both pre-World War II and contemporary Hawai‘i.

I am also involved in the exploration and development of new models for indigenous research in anthropology and the social sciences more generally, as well as the ways in which such research agendas articulate with other modes of critical scholarship.

Selected Publications:

2003 Hale Mua: (En)gendering Hawaiian Men. Doctoral Dissertation. Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.

2002 (En)gendering Colonialism: Masculinities in Hawai‘i and Aotearoa. Cultural Values 6(3):229-238.

2002 Ka Huaka‘i o Na ‘Oiwi: The Journey Home. In Fforde, C., Hubert, J., Turnbull, P. and Hanchant, D., eds. The Dead and their Possessions: Repatriation in Principle, Policy and Practice. London: Routledge, Pp.171-189. (with Edward Halealoha Ayau)

2001 Disappearing Worlds: Anthropology and Cultural Studies in Hawai‘i and the Pacific. In Native Pacific Cultural Studies on the Edge, V. Diaz and J. K. Kauanui, eds. Special Issue of The Contemporary Pacific 13(2):381-416. (with Geoffrey M. White)

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