Keith L. Camacho

Keith L. Camacho is a Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research examines the ways in which Japan and the United States have colonized the Mariana Islands and related locales in Oceania, as well as disavowed the political agencies of Chamorros and other Pacific Islanders. His award-winning monographs and co-edited collections evidence this intellectual trajectory about and political intervention against empire. The notable works include Sacred Men: Law, Torture, and Retribution in Guam (Duke University Press, 2019); Senka wo Kinensuru: Guamu Saipan no Rekishi to Kioku, Translated by Akira Nishimura and Yasuki Machi (Iwanami Shoten, 2016); Cultures of Commemoration: The Politics of War, Memory, and History in the Mariana Islands (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011); and Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific (University of Minnesota Press, 2010).

Camacho has also begun to analyze diasporas, settler colonialism, and youth, as illustrated in his volume, Reppin’: Pacific Islander Youth and Native Justice (University of Washington Press, 2021). As a Guggenheim Fellow, he will write an oral history about Samoan youth resilience in New Zealand and the United States. The project is called “Street Cred: A History of Samoan Gangs.”

Photo Credit: Juliann Anesi