The University of Hawaiʻi Press was founded in 1947, publishing research in all disciplines of the humanities and natural and social sciences in the regions of Asia and Pacific.
The Press's core mission revolves around the acquisition of books and journals that support new scholarship, enhance student success, and nurture Native Hawaiian ways of learning. UH Press has an especially distinguished list in Asian studies and is recognized as a leader in the fields of Buddhist studies and Southeast Asian studies.
University of Hawaiʻi Press Highlights
Tango in Japan
Tango in Japan reveals histories and ethnographies of tango in Japan dating back to its first introduction in the 1910s to the present day. While initially brought to Yokohama by North American tango dancers in 1914, tango’s immediate popularity in Japan quickly compelled many Japanese performers and writers to travel to Argentina in search of tango’s “origin” beginning in the 1920s. Many Japanese musicians, dancers, aficionados, and the wider public have, since then, approached tango as a new vehicle of expression, entertainment, and academic pursuit. The sounds of tango provided comfort and a sense of hope to many during the most turbulent years of the twentieth century, carving out distinctive characteristics of contemporary Japanese tango culture.
Literature for Little Bodhisattvas
In Literature for Little Bodhisattvas, Natasha Heller makes two key interventions: first, she argues that picturebooks are a new genre of Buddhist writing, and second, she calls attention to an emergent family Buddhism in Taiwan that fashions children as religious subjects through shared attention with adult readers. Surveying Taiwanese Buddhism from the ground up, Heller explores the changing family dynamics that have made children into a crucial audience for Buddhist education and the home a key site for Buddhist cultivation. By taking picturebooks seriously as part of the Buddhist textual tradition, Heller demonstrates their engagement with canonical sources alongside innovations for modern audiences.
Polarizing Dreams
Anyone genuinely curious about what makes South Korean pop culture tick should look no further than Gangnam. Celebrated in a song by an unlikely K-pop superstar named Psy in 2012, Gangnam is the epicenter of Hallyu, the Korean Wave. It is an exclusive zone of privilege and wealth that has lured pop culture industries since the 1980s and fueled the aspirations of Seoul’s middle class, producing in its wake the “dialectical images” of the modern city described by Walter Benjamin: sweet dreams and nightmares, visions of heaven and hell, scenes of spectacular rises and great falls. In Polarizing Dreams, Pil Ho Kim presents South Korea’s Gangnam-style urban development as a unique case of cultural globalization in the age of social polarization.
University of Hawaiʻi Press Copyright Year Collection
