Dr. Amy Kuʻuleialoha Stillman, an educator, author, haku mele (poet, composer) and two-time Grammy winner for Best Hawaiian Music Album, will visit UH West Oʻahu for a talk in the ʻUluʻulu screening area at 2 p.m., Wednesday, January 31.
Stillman, an associate professor of American Culture and Music in the American Studies Department at the University of Michigan, focuses her research on diaspora studies, historiography of performance, popular culture and American music. Among other degrees, Stillman has a Ph.D.in Musicology from Harvard University and an undergraduate degree in Hawaiian Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and has worked on mele and hula in addition to collaborating with artists on original and Kalākaua-era mele. Stillman was a producer on “ʻIkena,” an album featuring Daniel Ho and Tia Carrere, which won a Grammy for Best Hawaiian Music Album in 2008. In 2010 she repeated the fete, winning for work on “Huana Ke Aloha”, an album by Carrere.
She is being hosted by Dr. Kealani Cook, an UH West Oʻahu assistant professor of humanities, for a talk that will address the question, “Can an Imperialist Tool be used to Produce Indigenous Knowledge?,” and explore “Rationalizing a Scholarly Critical Edition of Hawaiian Songs.” The talk is sponsored by ʻUluʻulu: The Henry Kuʻualoha Giugni Moving Image Archive of Hawaiʻi.