A book by Associate Professor of American Studies Juliet Nebolon has won a 2026 Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) book award.
Settler Militarism: World War II in Hawai‘i and the Making of US Empire (Duke UP, 2024) was named a co-winner of the History Book Award.
Nebolon said, “I’m so honored to have received this award from the Association for Asian American Studies, which is a community of scholars whose work has been foundational to our understanding of Asian American history and experience, as well as to my journey as a researcher and teacher.”
In its citation of Nebolon’s book, the AAAS states, “Settler Militarism makes an exciting theoretical intervention into scholarly conversation about settler colonialism, one of the strongest turns in Asian American studies in recent decades, positing it as inextricably intertwined with U.S. militarism.
“Setting her study against the backdrop of Hawai’i as a military territory during World War II, Nebolon examines the construction and revision of race, indigeneity, and class amid the new structures and hierarchies created by wartime programs,” the citation says. “With a varied archive of government documents, media, and ephemera spanning language, food, and medicine, Settler Militarism exposes the workings of biopower as a tool of empire disguised as an imperative of a just war. We also recognize Settler Militarism for its contributions to the study of Hawai’i and the Kanaka Maoli people, an understudied area for Asian American studies.”
The AAAS citation adds, “Nebolon’s theoretical interventions will contribute to larger conversations around U.S. militarism and racialization across fields.”
The AAAS Book Awards offer opportunities for authors’ work to be publicly honored as exceptional and deserving of special recognition. In its announcement of the awards, the AAAS said, “The books nominated prove the vibrancy of Asian American studies scholarship and writing, and the field’s indispensable contribution to understandings of everyday survival, world-historic change, planetary struggle, axes of solidarity, and much more.”
Nebolon’s book was supported in part by a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). ACLS fellowships and grants are awarded to individual scholars for excellence in research in the humanities and related social sciences.
Nebolon earned a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale University. Her research and teaching bring a transnational perspective to the study of race, indigeneity, and gender in the United States, with a particular focus on U.S. war and empire in Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Read an interview with Nebolon about her award-winning book, Settler Militarism, here.
The digital humanities website Public Art CT—sponsored in part by Trinity College and created by a Trinity faculty member—has received a 2026 Award of Excellence from the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH).
Ewa Syta, Charles A. Dana Research Associate Professor of Computer Science and chair of Trinity’s Computer Science Department, has been named among the 46 finalists for the Connecticut Technology Council’s 21st annual Women of Innovation awards.
Trinity alumna Teodora “Tea” Brnović ’24 and Associate Professor of Sociology Alyson K. Spurgas recently had a co-authored article published in the October 2026 issue of Social Science & Medicine.
Trinity Computer Science faculty members Chandranil Chakraborttii and Kenneth A. Kousen are among the recipients of the first awards presented by the Connecticut AI Alliance’s AI Computing Access Program.
