Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire

Commodified Hawaiian culture—the “luau,” the “hula girl,” and “aloha”—became part of the American vernacular and everyday life.

tourism and Hawai‘i's economic development.

In order to write about hula, I had to also unwork this fundamental dictate, as do dancers: I was not simply recording what I was taught, but interpreting and assembling a shifting repertoire with its contradictions and ellipses.

soldiers and “hula girls” was valuable precisely because it was imagined: it involved no sexual intimacy.

confine the spread of venereal disease

What happened to transform hula from ignominy to celebrated practice in the islands and the United States?

American imperialism and Hawaiian popular cultural practices into the same arena to deliberate on hula within a larger context of the political and economic incorporation of Hawai‘i.

The emergence of the misnamed luau is tied to the Euro-American militarization of Hawai‘i, as waves of American

benefited from the soaring global interest in hula.3