Mission Statement

About

The University of Hawai'i is home to one of the oldest and largest American Studies departments in the United States. Hundreds of American Studies programs and departments exist throughout North America, South America, Europe and Asia, each of them having unique characteristics and strengths. But only the American Studies Department at the University of Hawai'i provides students at all levels with a broad-based foundation in traditional American Studies fields (such as history, literature, film, politics, gender, ethnicity, and the arts) along with an opportunity to pursue in depth cross-cultural specializations involving the United States, Asia, and the Pacific.

The Department's commitment to multiculturalism is especially appropriate in this setting, since in the University's student body (as in the State of Hawai'i at large) no one ethnic group comes close to constituting a majority of the population. All UH students, like all the people of Hawai'i, are therefore members of one or another minority group, and fully a third of the population is of mixed ethnic ancestry. Appropriately, the motto of the University is Above All Nations is Humanity. Everyone knows that Honolulu, like the rest of the Hawaiian Islands, is a wonderful place to visit and to live. What is less well known is that the University of Hawai'i provides an unmatched locale for the study of American culture and society. Situated at the crossroads of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, it is almost impossible for those who work and study at UH to view the United States in other than a richly complex, internationalist, and multicultural perspective.

As part of the University's commitment to the Nikkei Legacy Project, the partnership between Hamilton Library and the American Studies Department shall provide the following resources to the Nikkei Legacy Project: a comprehensive survey of all Nikkei-related collections and finding aides available in the UH Library system (http://libweb.hawaii.edu/digicoll/nikkei/index.html), updates and findings on Japanese Americans, and a continued effort to update and post all relevant articles to the Japanese American community in Hawaii and abroad.