Source of the Month: “Race, Nutrition and Empire: Domestic Reform and Japanese Immigrants in Territorial-Era Hawaiʻi,” by Mire Koikari

May’s source of the month is “Race, Nutrition and Empire: Domestic Reform and Japanese Immigrants in Territorial-Era Hawaiʻi” by University of Hawai’i Professor in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Mire Koikari, published in Gender & History (Sept. 2022).

From the article abstract: “The article examines the rise of domestic science in territorial-era Hawaiʻi. At the dawn of the twentieth century, as the Pacific became a new frontier, ‘manifest domesticity’ emerged as a prominent dynamic, and home economics became linked to empire-building. At the centre of this phenomenon was Carey D. Miller, a self-proclaimed ‘pioneer’ whose pursuit of nutritional research and reform was inseparable from American expansionism. The Pacific was complex terrain, however. Japan also was asserting influence in the region, dispatching emigrant workers and pursuing its own ambitions of settler colonialism in which the home and homemaking, including dietary reform, also assumed exceptional significance.”

Would you like to suggest a Source of the Month, or contribute to the H-Nutrition bibliography? Contact Josh Levy at jlevy@loc.gov. For more resources on the history of nutrition, please see H-Nutrition's Zotero library: https://www.zotero.org/groups/691119/h-nutrition/library