Catherine ʻĪmaikalani Ulep is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) historian and Assistant Professor of Indigenous Histories of the North American West at Whitman College. Born and raised in Kāneʻohe, Hawaiʻi, she specializes in Indigenous histories of the North American West, with a particular focus on Indigenous gendered labor, cross-cultural exchange, and material culture. Her interdisciplinary work brings Native Hawaiian women to the forefront of early nineteenth-century histories of oceanic and global commerce.
Ulep holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, where she was an International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) recipient. Her dissertation, “Makaʻāinana Wāhine: Clothing, Power, and the Sex-for-Goods Trade in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i” centers makaʻāinana wāhine (Native Hawaiian commoner women) in an analysis of early trade in Hawaiʻi. Centering Native Hawaiian women and their motivations to engage in foreign trade reveals the barter of sexual services with Euro-American men afforded opportunities to accrual highly-desired imported clothing. Through knowledge of the Hawaiian language and culture and with what Ulep calls, the study of the fashioning of the body, maka’āinana wāhine and their actions are foregrounded to illustrate how a shifting religious, social, and political order sought to control these women and their bodies. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources in both the Hawaiian and English languages, her research reveals how Native Hawaiian women engaged in a sex-for-goods trade to navigate and shape colonial maritime encounters, while wielding control over their bodies to influence fashion, governance, foreign trade, and power.
Her earlier work includes a master’s thesis from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa titled “Women’s Exchanges: The Sex Trade and Cloth in Early Nineteenth-Century Hawaiʻi,” which laid the foundation for her doctoral research. She earned her undergraduate degree in Humanities, with double concentrations in History and Hawaiian-Pacific Studies, from University of Hawaiʻi – West Oʻahu.
Dr. Ulep’s research and teaching explore themes of Indigeneity, gender and sexuality, cross-cultural exchange, labor, commodities, and material culture within global frameworks. She is especially committed to centering Indigenous women’s lived experiences in histories that have often overlooked their power, presence, skill, and innovation.
At Whitman College, she teaches courses on Native American and Indigenous histories, gender and sexuality, and Pacific Island histories. She continues to build her scholarship around stories of Native Hawaiian women and their intersections with empire, labor, and material life in the early modern Pacific.
Ulep’s forthcoming book, tentatively titled, Sex-for-Goods: The History of Native Hawaiian Commoner Women, Power, and Material Culture in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i builds and expands on her dissertation to further examines how makaʻāinana wāhine responded to and navigated the imposition of lifelong monogamous marriage. Indeed, these changes sought to end the commodification of their sexual labor through heteronormativity and heteropatriarchy. Foregrounding these women demonstrates that they married, separated, and divorced. Many of them continued to barter their sexual services while married. Some of them wed to protect their autonomy, property, and children. These same reasons caused others to divorce. Centering makaʻāinana wāhine and their motives before, during, and after the imposition of marriage reveals the shifting ways they wielded autonomy over their bodies.
She is also researching a second book-length project that looks at Native Hawaiians, other Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and Euro-American travelers, centering Native Hawaiian women with attention to gender and trans-indigenous encounters at the first half of the nineteenth century. She draws from Hawaiian- and English-language archival documents, ship’s logs, missionary letters, and newspapers to argue ships were vehicles for people with competing ideas to travel and carry out their own agendas.
Contact Information
Email: ulepc@whitman.edu
Phone: 509-527-5092
Select Recent Work
“Native Hawaiian Commoner Women and the Making of Shipboard Trade, 1778-1815” Western Historical Quarterly (forthcoming).
Co-authored with Aina Iglesias, Vernadette Gonzalez , Bryant De Venecia, Dean Saranillio, Lalaine Ignao, Marie Ramos, Romyn Sabatchi, Katherine Achacoso, Grace Caligtan, Paola Rodeles, Ellen-Rae Cachola, Malia Derden, Nadezna Ortega, Demiliza Saramosing, Catherine ʻĪmaikalani Ulep, Domi Ulep, and Kim Compoc. “‘Hoy Get Out of the Sun!’: Filipinx Talk Story on (Anti)Blackness in Occupied Hawaiʻi.” Alon Journal for Filipinx American and Diasporic Studies 2, no. 3 (2023): 347-349. https://doi.org/10.5070/ln42360544.
“Makaʻāinana Wāhine: Sex-for-Goods Trade and Fashion in Nineteenth Century Hawaiʻi.” PhD diss., University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, 2023.
“Women’s Exchanges: The Sex Trade and Cloth in Early Nineteenth-Century Hawaiʻi.” MA thesis, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2017.