Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The choice of an economy’s exchange rate regime has important economic consequences as it
determines the level and rigidity of a nation’s nominal prices internationally. According to most
exchange rate theories, this choice is said to reflect an economy’s structural and trade characteristic
and/or (sometimes) its larger geo-political concerns. National economies, then, have varying exchange
rate regime needs, according to their unique economic and political structures. As made explicit in the
title to Jeffrey Frankel’s (1999) recent Essay in International Finance; “No Single Currency Regime is
Right for All Countries or at All Times.”

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: On April 1st, 1941, eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Michael S., a working-class Italian man from New Jersey, was drafted by the US Army and swiftly sent to Honolulu. From the day that he was inducted until the day after he was discharged in 1945, Michael S. maintained a diary chronicling his life in the Army, making entries on a daily basis. The transcribed diary totals almost 400 pages of single-spaced, typewritten pages (Michael S. was also a prolific writer of letters and poems). The unpublished diary of this working-class soldier serves as a starting point for an analysis of the complex intersections among race, gender, sexual orientation, and class that existed during this era’s intensive myth-making about “American” identity. Although a single diary cannot provide the basis for generalizations about the processes whereby national identity is constructed, this particular diary offers unusual insights into the intersectionality at the heart of constructions of American identity.
Diarist Michael S. was one of thirteen children born to parents who had emigrated from southern Italy at the end of the nineteenth century. As the son of immigrants and as a working-class man, Michael S. had a stake in reproducing the sometimes meager privileges accorded him by virtue of his color and gender privilege. Michael S. was, however, accustomed to the black and white divide that predominated in the metropolitan New York area. The multiracial and multicultural landscape of Hawaii unsettled the familiar contours of color and gender that were key components of his identity as an American. As a result, his diary focused on the everyday life of a soldier who contradictorily embraced the patriotic, masculinist, and racist ethos of his era (not to mention the material benefits of army life, like regular meals and access to health care), while at the same time resisting the authoritarianism, elitism, and monotony of army life.
To further complicate the picture, class, gender, race, and sexual identity combined in a surprising and contradictory fashion in the pages of the diary. As Allan Berube (2001), George Chauncey (1994), John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman (1997), and Eve Sedgwick Kosofsky (1985, 1992) have variously argued, the intensely homosocial environs of military institutions have always been contradictory loci for sexual idenitites and practices. Michael S. chronicled his engagement with the gay subculture of the army, as well as that which existed in Hawaiian culture itself, in a vivid illustration of the manner in which people’s everyday lives and practices often contrast with the normative behaviors prescribed by dominant ideologies. In contrast to the seamlessness of contemporary narratives about the “greatest generation” (narratives often mobilized to justify our own era’s imperialist ambitions), Michael S.’s diary offers a dramatically different standpoint from which to investigate constructions of American identity during wartime, as well as the contradictions that necessarily underlie such constructions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This presentation will analyze the cultural significance of hula in contemporary Japan. It is estimated there are more than one hundred thousand people learning hula in Japan today. There are three nationally circulated magazines devoted to hula and a number of hula-related television programs have been broadcast nationally in the past several years. Some hula learners have even left Japan to study hula in Hawai‘i full-time. The number of Japanese hula learners far exceeds the number of practitioners in Hawai‘i.
Is this popularity of hula in Japan another example of egregious appropriation and commodification of indigenous tradition by a late-capitalist society? It is easy to argue so and there are plenty of examples that would sustain such an argument. However, further exploration into the popularity of hula provides a more complex picture. This presentation will use results gained from interviews conducted among the “serious” Japanese hula learners and investigate their understanding of this Hawaiian tradition. In particular, it focuses on Japanese people who have left Japan to study hula in Hawai‘i in search of experiencing the “real” hula. The number of such people, predominantly young women in their twenties and thirties, is increasing and there is a new thriving industry in Hawai‘i among the Hawaiian hula teachers to meet such a demand. Once in Hawai‘i, the Japanese students not only learn the art of the dance but also the Hawaiian language as well as the “authentic” spiritual meaning of this tradition.
The presentation will argue that the aspect of appropriation/commodification of the indigenous tradition among the Japanese practitioners does exist, but it is simultaneously accompanied by their desire to reify this Hawaiian tradition by elevating it to the realm of the “authentic” and “pure.” The simulated authenticity and purity of the tradition enables the Japanese hula practitioners to distance themselves from the “regular” tourists in Waikiki who only have “superficial” understanding of the Hawaiian culture. This kind of desire for the “authentic” also allows the Hawaiian hula teachers to appropriate the process of the commodification of their own tradition for their own benefit, thereby, in turn, providing them with a material means to sustain and perpetuate their tradition among the Native Hawaiian people. The paper will show how today’s culture of tourism enables a construction of cultural authenticity, which is produced by complex relationships between the providers and consumers of the tradition.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: One of the earliest ways the U.S. gained knowledge of Hawaii was through sheet music distributed across the mainland. Through the lyrics of the songs and the images on the covers, sheet music also brought the “hula girl” to the attention of American audiences. Analyzing how the hula girl is constructed through sheet music demonstrates the efforts of the entertainment industry to fit Hawaii and its native population into broader American understandings.