Two Women Political Scientists From the University of Hawaiʻi Win Book Awards

Two political science professors in the College of Social Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa have won 2019 Ka Palapala Poʻokela awards from the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers Association.

Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, chair of the political science department, received the award in the Hawaiian language culture and history category. She is the editor of Nā Wāhine Koa: Hawaiian Women for Sovereignty and Demilitarization (University of Hawaii Press, 2018). The awards committee stated that the book “provides an important contribution to scholarship about the Hawaiian Renaissance and the leadership of Hawaiian women.”

Dr. Goodyear-Kaʻōpua is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where she majored in Hawaiian studies and political science. She earned a Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Noenoe K. Silva won first place in the category of Aloha from Across the Sea (out-of-state publishers) for Power of the Steel-tipped Pen: Reconstructing Native Hawaiian Intellectual History (Duke University Press, 2017). The book spotlights the writings of Joseph Hoʻonaʻauao Kānepuʻu and Joseph Mokuʻōhai Poepoe.

Dr. Silva holds a bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian language, a master of library and information science degree, and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.