Faculty Directory

Summary of Expertise

Visual cultures of the Oceania; (inter)nationalism; culture contact; colonial cultures; gender studies; museums, collecting, and exhibition.

Research Interests

Stacy Kamehiro's research focuses on colonial Hawaiian visual culture, and she has published on quilts, architecture and race images in nineteenth-century trade card lithography. Kamehiro's current work examines the politics of art organizations in Hawai'i following the overthrow of the monarchy as well as nineteenth-century material culture collecting and exhibition practices in local and international contexts. Her book, The Arts of Kingship (2009), offers a sustained and detailed account of Hawaiian public art and architecture during the reign of David Kalakaua, the nativist and cosmopolitan ruler of the Hawaiian Kingdom from 1874 to 1891.

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D., Art History, University of California, Los Angeles
M.A., Art History, University of California, Los Angeles
B.A., Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego

Honors, Awards and Grants

President’s Research Fellowship in the Humanities. University of California, Office of the President. Arts Research Institute, Major Project Grants.

Selected Publications

• Books
• The Arts of Kingship: Hawaiian Art and National Culture of the Kalakaua Era. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009.
• Articles
• "About the Artist: Jewel Castro," The Contemporary Pacific, Vol. 20, no. 2, 2008.
• “Hawaiian Quilts: Chiefly Self-Representations in 19th Century Hawai‘i.” In Pragmatic Creativity and Cultural Hybridity: Textiles in and of the Pacific, ed. Phyllis Herda, Ping-Ann Addo, and Heather Young-Leslie. Special volume of The Journal of the Pacific Arts Association, new series, Vols. 3-5, 2007.
• “Iolani Palace: Spaces of Kingship in Late Nineteenth Century Hawai‘i,” Pacific Studies, Vol. 29, Nos. 3-4, 2006.
• “Representations of the Chinese in Nineteenth Century American Trade Cards,” Journal of Asian Culture, Vol. 17, 1995.

Selected Presentations

• # “Native Hawaiian Collecting and Collections, 1850-1900,” for Session: “Pacific Pasts, Agency, Archives, and Artifacts.” Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, 2009.
• # “The Kilohana Art League: Americanizing Hawaiian Art and Culture, 1894-1913,” College Art Association 96th Annual Conference, 2008.
• # “(Re)Collecting History: The Hawaiian National Museum.” College Art Association 94th Annual Conference, 2006.
• # “Representations” Panel. Approaches to an Interdisciplinary Pacific Studies Conference, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2004.
• # “Art Patronage from an Indigenous Hawaiian Perspective: King Kalākaua’s ‘Iolani Palace.” College Art Association 90th Annual Conference, 2002.
• # “The Aesthetics and Functions of Hawaiian Quilts.” Annual Colloquium on the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Native Americas, Pre- and Post-Columbian, 1989.

Selected Exhibitions

• Co-curator (with Dr. Ping-Ann Addo), “Cloth and Culture in Oceania: Bark Cloth from Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, and the Marquesas Islands.” UCSC Women’s Center.
• Co-director, “Katherine Ng, Book Arts,” Peppers Art Gallery, University of Redlands, Redlands, California
• Co-director, “El Nopal: Photomechanical Reproductions by Mexico City and L.A. Artists” (included the work of Daniel J. Martinez, Rubén Ortiz-Torres, John Valadez, Pia Elizondo, John Baldessari, Laureana Toledo, Carlos Somonte, Daniela Rossell, and Francesco Siqueiros), Peppers Art Gallery, University of Redlands, Redlands, California
• Co-director, “Image and Text in Asian Art,” Peppers Art Gallery, University of Redlands, Redlands, California
• Co-director, “ARTillery art collective” (a Los Angeles-based women’s art collective), Peppers Art Gallery, University of Redlands, Redlands, California
• Co-director, “Art As Mediation,” Peppers Art Gallery, University of Redlands, Redlands, California

Teaching Interests

Undergraduate Courses HAVC 10E: Introduction to the Visual Cultures of Africa, Oceania, and the Native Americas: Colonial Histories and Legacies HAVC 80T: The Art of the Body in Oceania HAVC 105P: Introduction to the Visual Cultures of Oceania HAVC 187A: Textile Traditions of Oceania HAVC 190O: Art and Culture Contact in Oceania HAVC 191P: Art and Identity in Oceania Future Graduate Seminars Colonial Cultures of Collecting and Display Visual Cultures of Tourism