:Gary Okihiro
{{Short description|American author and scholar (1945 – 2024)}}
{{Infobox scholar
| name = Gary Y. Okihiro
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| birth_date = {{birth date|1945|10|14|df=y}}
| birth_place = Aiea, Hawaii{{cite web| title=UHWO welcomes Distinguished Visiting Scholar Dr. Gary Okihiro| url=https://manoa.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=4927|date=2012-02-16| access-date=2024-05-27}}
| death_date = {{death date and age|2024|05|20|1945|10|14|df=y}}
| death_place = New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
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| workplaces = Columbia University, Cornell University, Yale University
| alma_mater = Pacific Union College, UCLA
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| doctoral_students = Mary Ting Yi Lui
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| main_interests = Historical methodology and theories of social and historical formations, the history of racism and racial formation in the U.S., pre-colonial and colonialist economic history, and race and world history
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| website = https://americanstudies.yale.edu/people/gary-okihiro
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Gary Y. Okihiro (October 14, 1945 – May 20, 2024) was an American author and scholar. Before he moved to Yale,{{Cite news | last = Treisman | first = Rachel | title = Gary Okihiro to join faculty | newspaper=Yale Daily News |date = September 5, 2017 | url=https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/09/05/gary-okihiro-to-join-faculty/}} he was a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University in New York City and the founding director of Columbia's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. Okihiro received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1976.{{Cite web |title=Gary Okihiro {{!}} American Studies |url=https://americanstudies.yale.edu/people/gary-okihiro |access-date=2023-06-14 |website=americanstudies.yale.edu |language=en}}
Education
Okihiro earned a B.A. in history from Pacific Union College in 1967.{{Cite web |title=Dr. Gary Okihiro · Digital Collections |url=https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1173 |access-date=2023-06-15 |website=omeka.binghamton.edu}} He earned his M.A. in history from UCLA in 1972.{{Cite web |last=Okihiro |first=Gary |title=Gary Y. Okihiro |url=http://ac4link.ei.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/FacultyCV/GaryOkihiro.pdf |access-date=2023-06-14 |website=Columbia University Anthropology}} Okihiro earned his Ph.D. in African History at UCLA in 1976. His dissertation was titled "Hunters, Herders, Cultivators, and Traders: Interaction and Change in the Kgalagadi, Nineteenth Century."{{Cite web |title=Gary Y. Okihiro papers, 1939-2018 {{!}} Rare Book & Manuscript Library {{!}} Columbia University Libraries Finding Aids |url=https://findingaids.library.columbia.edu/ead/nnc-rb/ldpd_12444537/dsc |access-date=2023-06-15 |website=findingaids.library.columbia.edu}}
Okihiro served in the Peace Corps in Botswana for three years.
Career
Prior to Yale and Columbia, Okihiro was the director of Asian American Studies at Cornell University.{{Cite web |first=Rachel |last=Treisman |date=2017-09-05 |title=Gary Okihiro to join faculty |url=https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/09/05/gary-okihiro-to-join-faculty/ |access-date=2023-06-14 |website=Yale Daily News |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Asian American Studies celebrates 35th anniversary |url=https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/10/asian-american-studies-celebrates-35th-anniversary |access-date=2023-06-15 |website=Cornell Chronicle |language=en}} He was recruited to Columbia partially as a result of a 1996 undergraduate student protest calling for an ethnic studies department to provide counterbalance to what was perceived to be a biased pro-Western core curriculum.{{Cite news |date=2011-03-27 |title=From the Issue: Dissent Since '68 |work=Bwog: Columbia Student News |url=https://bwog.com/2011/03/from-the-issue-dissent-since-68/ |access-date=2023-06-14}} He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Asian American Studies and the American Studies Association, and was a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies. In 2010, Okihiro received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Ryukyus.{{Cite web |title=West Oʻahu: UHWO welcomes Distinguished Visiting Scholar Dr. Gary Okihiro {{!}} University of Hawaii News |url=https://manoa.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=4927 |access-date=2023-06-15 |website=manoa.hawaii.edu}}
Social Formation Theory
Okihiro was the originator of "social formation theory," which he defined as the forms and processes of power in society to oppress and exploit. By forms, he meant the discourses and practices of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation, and by processes, he referred to the articulations and intersections of those social categories. Power is agency, while oppression is the restriction of agency, and exploitation, the expropriation of land and labor. Okihiro has also proposed a field of study that he called "Third World studies" from the "Third World curriculum" demanded by students of the Third World Liberation Front in 1968. Third World studies, he contended, is the correct name for the field now known as "ethnic studies." He explained that name switch and some of its consequences in his book, "Third World Studies: Theorizing Liberation" (2016).
Death
Okihiro died in New Haven, Connecticut, on May 20, 2024, at the age of 79.{{cite web |title=Farewell to Gary Okihiro |url=https://dukeupress.wordpress.com/2024/05/21/farewell-to-gary-okihiro/ |website=Duke University Press |access-date=25 May 2024}}{{citation |last=Tillen |first=Chris |title=“Trailblazer, inspiring mentor and a generous friend and colleague”: remembering Gary Okihiro| newspaper=Yale Daily News |date=May 25, 2024 |url=https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2024/05/25/trailblazer-inspiring-mentor-and-a-generous-friend-and-colleague-remembering-gary-okihiro/}}
Writings
Okihiro was the author of twelve books, six of which have won national awards, and dozens of articles on historical methodology and theories of social and historical formations, and the history of racism and racial formation in the U.S., African pre-colonial economic history, and race and world history. Among his books are:
- Cane Fires: The Anti-Japanese Movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945 ({{ISBN|0877229457}});
- Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture ({{ISBN|0295973390}});
- (with Joan Myers) Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II ({{ISBN|0295974982}});
- (with Linda Gordon) Impounded: Dorothea Lange And the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment ({{ISBN|039306073X}});
- Common Ground: Reimagining American History ({{ISBN|0691070075}});
- The Columbia Guide to Asian American History ({{ISBN|0231115113}});
- Island World: A History of Hawai`i and the United States ({{ISBN|9780520252998}});
- Pineapple Culture: A History of the Tropical and Temperate Zones ({{ISBN|9780520255135}}).
- The Boundless Sea: Self and History ({{ISBN|9780520309654}}).
- American History Unbound: Asians and Pacific Islander ({{ISBN|9780520274358}}).
- Third World Studies: Theorizing Liberation ({{ISBN|9780822362098}}).
Okihiro also wrote on African history, including A Social History of the Bakwena and Peoples of the Kalahari of Southern Africa, 19th Century ({{ISBN|0773478396}}).
References
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External links
- [http://www.garyokihiro.com/ Personal site]
- [http://sipa.columbia.edu/academics/directory/gyo3-fac.html Columbia University faculty page]
- [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/uscc/archives/news/opinion.htm "On Comparative Ethnic Studies"] by Gary Okihiro, Columbia Daily Spectator, Feb. 20, 2004
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20061211223602/http://www.asianweek.com/051096/CampusPoli.html "College students renew demands for ethnic studies programs"] by Alethea Yip, AsianWeek, May 10, 1996
- [http://findingaids.cul.columbia.edu/ead//nnc-rb/ldpd_11220805 Gary Okihiro Papers] at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY
- [https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1173 Interview with Gary Okihiro] by Stephen McKiernan, Binghamton University Libraries Center for the Study of the 1960s, November 2010
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Category:Pacific Union College alumni
Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni
Category:American academics of Japanese descent
Category:American writers of Japanese descent
Category:Columbia University faculty