Brandeisnow - April, 2010
For the third time in the past decade, a Brandeis doctoral dissertation has been judged the best in the nation by The Society of American Historians.
Noelani Arista, an Irving and Rose Crown Fellow who will be awarded her PhD at the university’s commencement in May, has won the 50th annual Allan Nevins Prize for her interdisciplinary thesis, "Histories of Unequal Measure: Euro-American Encounters with Hawaiian Governance and Law, 1793-1827," which she defended in December.
Arista joins an illustrious cast of past winners, including such luminaries as William Freehling and Mary Beth Norton. She also joins two other Brandeis Crown Fellow winners: Jeff Wiltse, PhD'02, won in 2003, and Jessica Lepler, PhD'07, in 2008.
“I feel very honored to win this distinguished prize, especially because my goal was to be able to write a dissertation about Hawai`i and early encounters between Hawai`i and the US in a way that brought Hawaiian history to the attention of the main stream of American history,” Arista said. “That a dissertation that emphasizes Native (Hawaiian) history was awarded this prize I believe is significant.”
Arista, who currently teaches in the History Department at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa, says it was her academic background in Hawaiian culture and language that made her feel at home at Brandeis. “I felt that Brandeis with its own cultural and historical traditions would be a good fit for me in this stage of my development, and I have found it to be a culturally diverse and rich place of seeking after knowledge, a Hawaiian cultural value known as `Imi Loa," Arista said.
Arista was interested in illuminating this unequal history because she felt that American approaches to the study of Hawaiian history have always been written in English language sources and methodological assumptions. It was her goal to draw upon both English and Hawaiian sources to tell a different story about the transformation of Hawaiian government during this period.
“I argue that Hawaiians have their own conceptualization and reality when it comes to history and the interpretation of events, and also make the point that not only linguistic, but cultural literacy is central to telling this history well,” Arista said.
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