Glamour in the Pacific : Cultural Internationalism and Race Politics in the Women's Pan-Pacific

Since its inception in 1928, the Pan-Pacific Women¿s Association (PPWA) has witnessed and contributed to enormous changes in world and Pacific history. Operating out of Honolulu, this women¿s network established a series of conferences that promoted social reform and an internationalist outlook through cultural exchange. For the many women attracted to the project¿from China, Japan, the Pacific Islands, and the major settler colonies of the region¿the association¿s vision was enormously attractive, despite the fact that as individuals and national representatives they remained deeply divided by colonial histories. Glamour in the Pacific tells this multifaceted story by bringing together critical scholarship from across a wide range of fields, including cultural history, international relations and globalization, gender and empire, postcolonial studies, population and world health studies, world history, and transnational history. Early chapters consider the first PPWA conferences and the decolonizing process undergone by the association. Following World War II, a new generation of nonwhite women from decolonized and settler colonial nations began to claim leadership roles in the Association, challenging the often Eurocentric assumptions of women¿s internationalism. In 1955 the first African American delegate brought to the fore questions about the relationship of U.S. race relations with the Pan-Pacific cultural internationalist project. The effects of cold war geopolitics on the ideal of international cooperation in the era of decolonization were also considered.