Kelema Moses: From Plantations to Invasive Infrastructures: Kanaka Maoli Mobilization for 'Āina
Architectural historian Kelema Moses will be discussing Kanaka Maoli epistemologies of the land, sea and sky in Hawai’i. One of three lectures on the legacy of colonial histories in North America; the privatization of nature and land; and the logic of the plantation and enclosure on contemporary life in the series Nature and Sovereignty organized by Alena Williams, Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies in Winter Semester 2025/26.
Kelema Lee Moses is Assistant Professor of Urban Studies and Planning and Member of the Indigenous Futures Institute at the University of California, San Diego. Her teaching and research combine historical perspectives with discussions about contemporary issues related to the built environment of the Americas and Oceania. Her scholarship has appeared in the edited volume Colonial Frames/Nationalist Histories: Imperial Legacies, Architecture and Modernity as well as Pacific Arts, Avery Review, Platform, The Contemporary Pacific and Chicago Art Journal among other publications. Moses's research has been supported by a Getty/ACLS Fellowship, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Black Studies Project at UC San Diego, and the East-West Center at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. She is currently co-chair of the Globalizing Architectural History Education affiliate group of the Society of Architectural Historians and an advisory board member for Hawai'i Non-Linear.