Natalee Kēhaulani Bauer (Ph.D. 2017) is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) scholar born in Honolulu and raised between/across Hawai’i and the San Francisco Bay Area. Natalee received her B.A. in English and American Literature from Mills College in 1997. After teaching in public schools for eight years, she returned to Mills College to complete an M.A. in English and American Literature in 2007. Her master’s thesis is titled, “Marked Difference: Monsters, Miscegenation, and Marking in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” and it explores the “black mark” the creature leaves, like a signature, on the necks of his victims, proposing that this mark operates as a metaphor for miscegenation, the feared “one-drop” of black blood that threatens to contaminate a vulnerable whiteness.

After again returning to public education in 2007, Natalee shifted her scholarly focus from literature to Social and Cultural Studies in Education. She was a Chancellor’s Fellow in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley from 2010-2015. Her doctoral dissertation titled, “(En)gendering Whiteness: A Historical Analysis of White Womanhood, Colonial Anxieties, and “Tender Violence” in US Schools,” uses a historical lens to analyze the trope of white female teachers (~80% of the profession) as benevolent mothers/saviors in communities of color, finding its discursive roots in the early 19th century missionary project and US imperial expansion.

In addition to teaching and conducting research, Natalee supervises pre-service student teachers in the UC Berkeley Developmental Teacher Education Program, and collaborates with the feminist collective Hinemoana of Turtle Island. For the most current information, please visit nataleekehaulanibauer.com.