Brown Bag Biography with Mire Koikari

February 29, 12:00pm - 1:15pm
Mānoa Campus, KUY 410

The Center for Biographical Research presents: /鈥淐rafting Japanese Immigrant Nationalism(s) in 1930s Hawai鈥榠鈥 / Mire Koikari, Professor, Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Hawai驶i at Ma虅noa / Prior to WWII, Japanese immigrant nationalism flourished in Hawai鈥榠. At the center of this little-known phenomenon were imon bukuro (comfort bags), handmade by immigrant women and gifted to Japanese soldiers鈥攖hose aboard the navy training vessels calling Hawai鈥榠 as well as troops deployed in the distant battlefields in China. The gendered patriotic campaign was part of the larger tale of Japan鈥檚 empire-building in which island and homeland, gunboat and sewing needle, and territorial conquest and seaborne expansion all played crucial roles. / Mire Koikari is Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Hawai鈥榠 at 惭腻苍辞补. Born and raised in Yokohama, Japan, she spent a number of years in Madison, Wisconsin prior to her relocation to Hawai鈥榠 in 1997. Her recent/major publications include Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa: Women, Militarized Domesticity, and Transnationalism in East Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Gender, Culture, and Disaster in Post-3.11 Japan (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2020; currently translated into Russian), and 鈥淩ace, Nutrition, and Empire: Domestic Reform and Japanese Immigrants in Territorial-Era Hawai鈥榠,鈥 in Gender & History, 鈥淪pecial Issue: Food and Sovereignty鈥 (vol. 34, no. 3, 2022). / Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Center for Oral History, Conflict and Peace Specialist, and the Departments of American Studies, English, Ethnic Studies, History, Political Science, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies / Thursday, February 29 / Kuykendall 410 / 12PM to 1:15PM HST


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