In this episode of Relations of Salt and Stars, we talk with our friend and colleague Dr. Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipua’akaha’opulani Hobart, in advance of her visiting us at the University of Utah. Save the date: Friday March 3rd, from 10 to 12, at the Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Center (Room 143, the Jewel Box), we will host Dr. Hobart to discuss her new book, Cooling the Tropics. Angela and I, along with another colleague of ours from Gender Studies, Dr. Sarita Gaytán, will be in discussion with Dr. Hobart about her book, and lunch will be served after! Please join us!

Dr. Hobart, who is Kanaka Maoli, is an Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale University. An interdisciplinary scholar, she researches and teaches on issues of settler colonialism, environment, and Indigenous sovereignty. Her first book, Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Duke University Press, 2022) is a recipient of the press’s Scholars of Color First Book Award. Her articles have appeared in refereed journals such as NAIS, Media+Environment, Food, Culture, and Society, and The Journal of Transnational American Studies, among others. She is the co-editor of the special issue “Radical Care,” for Social Text (2020), and the editor of Foodways of Hawaiʻi (Routledge, 2018). She is currently working on a project about cultural memory, commemoration, and hauntings in Hawaii State Parks. Professor Hobart holds a PhD in Food Studies from New York University, an MA in Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture from the Bard Graduate Center, and an MLS in Rare Books Librarianship and Archives Management from the Pratt Institute. She joined Yale in 2022 from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology.

Special thanks to Dr. Hi’ilei Hobart for joining us on this episode, and visiting us in person next month.

Thanks also to our sponsors: the Mellon Foundation, the University of Utah’s School for Cultural and Social Transformation, and the University of Utah’s College of Humanities.