Dissertation Title
Toward a Hawaiian Place of Learning: International Student Perspectives
Chair: Christina Higgins
(Proposal Defended: September 2021)
Dissertation Abstract: The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM) is a flagship, public university in the United States, which emphasizes its commitment to global competitiveness while also striving to be a Hawaiian Place of Learning (HPoL). Multiple stakeholders have continued to push for greater recognition and engagement with the university as an institution that celebrates Hawaiian ways of knowing, particularly Hawaiian history, language, and culture. International students in particular may find themselves at discursive crossroads at UHM because learning about HPoL and living pono (morally, properly) in Hawaiʻi might be at odds with neoliberal discourses in higher education which highlight competition and accumulation of capital, and which are conventional reasons for international students to study in the U.S. My dissertation examines international students’ experiences at UHM, both as a university positioned in the global north, and therefore conventionally as a center of neoliberal, globally-minded perspectives; and as a university that is striving to become a HPoL, whose unique location in Hawaiʻi, invites oftentimes radically different understandings of place, learning, and positionality. I explore international students’ construction of the university’s identity and the reasons they do or do not take part in learning about the Hawaiian language, culture and history, when they are offered the opportunity.