Resistance and Imperial Universities: University of Hawai’i and the University of Puerto Rico

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Geopolitics and Global Crises: Regionalism, Internationalization, and Higher Education (Table 29)

Abstract

The University of Hawai’i (UH) and the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) are imperial universities founded during the United States' expansion to the Caribbean and the Pacific. The resistance that has taken place and continues to take place at UH and UPR serves as a counternarrative to the denial and violence of U.S. imperialism. Through contemporary archipelagic thinking, I bring "the continental United States and its colonized territories together in one analytic framework to scrutinize their mutual influences in one interconnected landscape" (Leinius & Burchardt, 2022, p. 4) to examine the role of imperial institutions in deculturating each island. I aim to avoid the enmeshed colonial and imperial hegemonies placed upon the two islands, their histories, and their culture.

Author

• Luz Nereida Burgos-Lopez, University of Connecticut