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Instructor develops new Pacific Islands Studies course devoted to exploring the nuances of womanhood in Oceania

Dr. Line-Noue Memea Kruse developed a new course focusing on the women in Oceania.

Four BYU–Hawaii students commend Dr. Line-Noue Memea Kruse, a special instructor, for her passionate teaching and the groundbreaking new course she introduced this Spring Semester 2019. They say she encouraged them to be open-minded, has taught them the value of having a diverse perspective of the world and given them a greater understanding of what it means to be a woman in Oceania.

Reni Broughton, a freshman from New Zealand majoring in interdisciplinary studies, said, “[Dr. Kruse] challenges us all to think critically and develop our own opinions. Her passion for Pacific Islands Studies ensures she does her best to help each student be prepared both for further academia and our eventual return home to serve.”

A born and raised Laie girl, Kruse is a wife, mother to four children, has a bachelor’s degree, two master’s and a doctorate. She said this new class she’s developing, Women of Oceania, is for the students.

“I didn’t create a different class just to create a different class. I created this class because I truly believe the outcome, the learning and the interaction will benefit students when they graduate.”

Seeing the world from Samoan eyes

Lily Tuivai, a freshman majoring in communications from Australia, said Kruse is a wonderful teacher because she is passionate about what she teaches. “She talks about her experiences and shows emotion.  You can see the love that she has for what she teaches.”

When explaining how a person’s upbringing and culture influences their perception, Kruse said, “My experiences...and my understanding of the world is different [than yours simply] because I see the world from Samoan eyes.”

Kruse said she once asked a student how they would feel if all of their professors were men. “Wouldn’t the teaching be from a certain perspective? The reason we should have both men and women teaching at universities with different perspectives and different experiences is it enriches the diversity of understanding in the students.”

According to Tuivai, Kruse teaches not only from her own perspective as a Pacific Islander, but also includes the perspectives of other people. “And she lets us decide what we want our opinion to be... She lets us think for ourselves and encourages us to be more open-minded.

Kruse explained, “It’s not so you can have men and women of different colors for just a picture. It’s so the students benefit from a diverse classroom setting.

“If you were told something was a certain way, you might think that way the rest of your life. Whereas, if you’re open-minded, you can see things different ways and come to have a better understanding of them.”

Kayli Whiting, a freshman from Utah with an undeclared major, took a class from Kruse last semester and she said Kruse offers a viewpoint that is more inclusive of all groups.

“I think we can become blind to things around us just because of how we grew up... But it’s important we look past what’s normal and come to understand what’s really going on around the world.”

She added Kruse’s class helped her learn what was happening in the Pacific. “It completely changed my perspective and helped me view things, situations, conflicts and political standings, from the viewpoints of minorities and people who are usually overlooked.”

The Invisible Fisherfolk

Because the majority of books have been written by non-Pacific Islanders, Kruse said she doesn’t want her students to define their knowledge based on what they’ve read in books.

“There are traditional spaces that are reserved for men in Oceania,” she explained. “Say for example fishing. Men normally fish. But what’s not written about are what I call the invisible fisherfolk, which are women. We take the fish. We set the price. We barter for material commodities. We do the action of providing for the family.

“The outside world sees the men as fishing and the women in the house. We’re more than in the house. We’re selling the fish, getting the money, buying the goods… We do a lot more than just [operate in] the domestic sphere.”

Kruse added her hope is her students gain a better understanding of  “our role in society and that we are not dominated as literature suggests. In academia we are invisible, but that’s not how it is when you go back home and serve in your country. We have an equal role.”

 Broughton shared similar sentiments. “The study of women and gender in the Pacific is often easily overlooked [because] for many people it’s irrelevant, overly feminist, and the people who study women… are jokingly tied to awful stereotypes.”

Gaining a greater understanding of the roles of women in Oceania is one of the benefits Broughton said drew her to the class. She said it will help her collaborate with women in the future and together design solutions to some of their biggest challenges in the Pacific.

“I’m passionate about creating ways to empower and heal Pacific communities,” she stated. “I know this starts in the family and in the home, which traditionally falls under the responsibility of women.”

Tamarina Barlow, a senior communications major from California who is also currently enrolled in Kruse’s Women of Oceania course, said, “I'm hoping to learn more about how to establish my own identity as a Pacific Islander woman and how to uplift others around me to embrace their experiences as one as well.”

Barlow said a large factor in her decision to attend BYUH was to get more in touch with her culture. “Being born and raised in the States, I grew up with many aspects of the Samoan culture in my home, but my parents always told me to take it upon myself to learn more deeply if that’s what I wanted.”

She said after only a week and a half in the class, Dr. Kruse has already taught them how to take back and redefine their identity as Pacific Islanders.

Though she is not in the class, Tuivai said she wants to take it in the future. “When we think of Oceania, we just think about the men’s side of things and not really the women’s. We have a big part to play in history.

“Women have sacrificed a lot in our history but a lot of people don’t know any of that.”  Tuivai said this is because Polynesian history is often only passed on orally.

“Hopefully more men will take the class,” she added. “I’m aware there’s a lot of girls in it, but it would be great to see more guys in there because it’s not just for women.”

Women AND men of Oceania

Like Tuivai, Kruse herself expressed numerous times during her interview that the class was not just for women. “This isn’t an anti-men class. I’m wanting to highlight, not segregate, women’s experiences.

“This class is about understanding how both genders, how the nuances of their roles and evolving cultures, can have positive influences on building up a higher quality of life in the Pacific Islands.”  She continued, “This university was created by a prophet who had prophetic vision. His vision was to build up a university so men and women could come to these blessed Hawaiian Islands and receive a higher education, men and women from Asia and the Pacific.

According to Kruse, “This class meets different points that fit the bigger picture of why we’re here in this second estate and what we can leave behind to make this world better.”

Barlow added it is better late than never for a class like this to be offered at BYUH. “It’s crazy this is the first time a course on women in Oceania is being taught, despite the initial goal of the school to educate the people of the Pacific region.

“I can easily see how Dr. Kruse is definitely more than qualified to help us learn and embrace this subject.”

According to Kruse’s syllabus for the class, the course explores the values and embodied experiences of women in Oceania. Universalism and relativism, nature and culture, personhood and identity and the differences between women, men and transgendered persons in a Pacific context are some of the many topics they will be examining this semester.

In the syllabus, Kruse writes, “we will… consider how an attention to women’s lives challenges a number of epistemological assumptions... approaches and ideas about ‘traditional’ gender relations… the ways in which power, race, class, culture, sex and gender produce different kinds of subjectivities, [and how] the movement to empower women under the banner of ‘feminism’ has been problematic in the Pacific.”

Writer: Emi Wainwright