GREG DVORAK

Greg Dvorak is an Associate Professor of Pacific/Asian History and Cultural Studies at Waseda University, and teaches Pacific Studies as an adjunct lecturer at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo and Osaka University. Having spent his childhood on the US military base in Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands and much of his adult life in Japan, his research focuses mainly on themes of militarization, memory, gender, sexuality, and art between Oceania (particularly the Marshall Islands), Japan, and the United States. He is the founder of Transoceania, a program to foster international Pacific Studies in Japan. As an offshoot of this, he also began Project35, a small network of artists, activists, and scholars that collaborate on themes of demilitarization, decolonization, and environment through the promotion of contemporary Pacific art. Among other publications, he has authored essays in the Contemporary Pacific, the Journal of Pacific History, and guest edited Amerasia Journal. His cultural history of Kwajalein Atoll, Concrete and Coral: Remembering Kwajalein Atoll between Japan, America, and the Marshall Islands, is forthcoming from University of Hawai'i Press in mid-2018.

From 2015-2017, Dvorak also served as a curatorial advisor to curatorial director Fumio Nanjo on the Honolulu Biennial 2017, "Middle of Now | Here," an international art exhibition that focused especially on the work of Pacific artists and on themes encompassing contemporary Oceania and the broader Asia and Pacific region.  He is currently working as an advisor to the Asia-Pacific Triennial 2018 in Brisbane, Australia, and currently aiming toward co-curating an exhibition of contemporary Pacific Islander artists in Japan in conjunction with the Mori Art Museum within the next few years.