she/her/her's
Arts Division
Assistant Professor
Faculty
Porter College Academic
Porter D227
Virtual: Tuesdays 1:30 to 2:30 PM / In-person: Thursdays 12:30 to 1:30 PM
Porter / Kresge Business Office
Ph.D. English (Literature), University of California, Riverside | Designated Emphasis in Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science |
M.A. English (Literature), University of California, Riverside | Awarded with Distinction |
B.A. English, University of Hawaii at Manoa
A.A. Liberal Arts, Leeward Community College
Dr. Nicole Ku'uleinapuananioliko'awapuhimelemeleolani Furtado was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and has lived in California over the last six years.
Indigenous Futurisms, Oceanic Digital Art, Virtual Art, Science & Technology Studies, Cyberfeminisms, Indigenous Virtual Reality/AI, Speculative Aesthetics, Digital Ontologies, Performance Theory, Affect, & Ephemera
I am a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) writer and scholar whose research builds on the methodology of mo'olelo or Native Hawaiian forms of storytelling, as a way to (re)imagine Indigenous futurities that move us beyond a "here-and-now" temporality and that which supports critical faculations of Native relationality. My work aims to center how Indigenous digital arts restore kinship relations, develop land-based pedagogies that challenge the settler commercialization of land and landscapes, and emphasize the need for ethical networks of relations for how we encounter social technologies into the future.
My courses emphasize decolonial/anti-colonial pedagogies in the readings, lectures, and overall course materials; however, I also cultivate this type of relationality in the way the class itself is conducted.
HAVC 201A: Introduction to Visual Studies
HAVC 76: Oceanic Digital Arts
HAVC 176: Visual Sovereignty
Mellon Foundation/UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship Program UC-HSI Humanities Initiative Grant (2024)
University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellowship (2023-2024)
Summer Dissertation Fellowship, Center for Ideas & Society, University of California, Riverside (2023)
Rupert Costo Chair Grant, University of California, Riverside (2023)
MOMUS Emerging Art Critics Residency Fellow, Writing Relations, Making Futurities: Global Indigenous Art Criticism (2022)
Graduate Research Mentorship Program Fellowship, University of California, Riverside (2022)
Center for Ideas & Society Humanities Grant, University of California, Riverside (2021 & 2022)
UC Speculative Futures Research Grant, University of California, Riverside (2019 & 2022)
"Visual Sovereignty: Indigenous Studies for Artists," Project Co-Leader. Sponsored by Human Resources Los Angeles & the University of California, Riverside (2021)
Research Scholar, The Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity Fall Thematic (2020).
Kamehameha Schools, Na Hookama a Pauahi Scholarship (2018-2023)
San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Native Pathways Scholarship (2019 & 2020)
Eugene Cota-Robles Fellowship, University of California, Riverside (2018)
Upcoming Presentations:
Stars, Earth, and Coral: Pacific Entanglements and Futures Beyond the Human. University of California, Davis. Upcoming October 24, 2024. Invited Speaker.
Beyond the Human: Indigenous Inhumanity & Collective Liberation. American Studies Association, Baltimore, MD. Upcoming November 17, 2024. Panelist.
Current Research in Pacific Visual Studies. College Art Association, New York City, NY. Upcoming February 2025. Co-Chair & Speaker.
Past Presentations:
Hawaiian Futurisms Symposium, Pacific Arts Association, 2024. Co-Organizer & Speaker.
"US Imperialism Workshop." Practical Activism Conference, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2024. Invited Speaker.
"Photographing Hawaiian Futurities: Indigenous Portraiture and the Poly-Fantastic" at The 25th Pacific History Association Biennial Conference, 2023. Co-Presenter.
"I ka wa ma mua, I ka wa ma hope: Towards an Aesthetic & Praxis of Hawaiian Futurisms in Noah Harders Art." PAA Currents, Pacific Arts Association. 2023. Invited Speaker.
Representing Indigeneity, Women, and Work. Center for Ideas and Society, University of California, Riverside. 2023. Co-Organizer & Speaker.
"Hyperreal Immersions: Las Vegas & the Fullfillment of Capitalistic Desire." Seeding Relations: Beyond Settler Colonial and Racialized Ecologies, Harvard University Mahindra Humanities Center, 2022. Panelist.
"Wandering the World's Most Isolated Metropolis: Structured Dispossesion & Post-Apocalyptic Stress Syndrome in the Film Waikiki." London Science Fiction Research Association, London, England, 2021. Panelist.
"Galaxies like Islands, Islands like Galaxies: Envisioning Futurity through Indigneous Cosmogony." Comics and Their Audiences / Audiences and Their Comics, University of Cambridge, England, 2021. Invited Speaker.
Comics and California Nations Performing Reclamation, University of California, Riverside, 2021. Moderator.
"Envisoning Ea and the Reconnecting of Land-Based Pedagogies in Native Hawaiian Speculative Art." Climate Fictions / Indigenous Studies, University of Cambridge, England, 2020. Panelist.
"Carving Identiites in Cyberrspace: Indigneous Virtual Reality." Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, University of Waikato, New Zealand, 2019. Panelist.
"Focusing on the Future: Education and the Formation of Native Hawaiian Cultural Consciousness." Speculative Futures of Education Symposium, University of California, Riverside, 2019. Co-Organizer & Panelist.
"Interview with Stephen Graham Jones." Horror and Indigeniety, University of Texas Press, Forthcoming 2025.
"Across Lewa and Kikilo." An Ocean of Wonder: The Fantastic in the Pacific, University of Hawaii Press. (2024).
"Indigenous Futurisms." The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, Routledge. (2024).
"Carving Identities in Cyberspace: Indigenous Virtual Reality." Beyond Mimesis: Aesthetic Experience in Uncanny Valleys, Rowman & Littlefield. (2023).
"Embodying Oceanic Relationality: An Introspective of the 2022 Hawai'i Triennial." Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, Vol. 23, No 2. (2023).
"Wandering the World's Most Isolated Metropolis: Structured Dispossesion & Post-Apocalyptic Stress Syndrome in the Film Waikiki." Trans-Indigenous Science Fictions, Science Fiction Research Association. (2021).
Book Review on Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawaii and Oceania. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Vol. 44 No. 1, 2020, American Indian Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.
