Asia Pacific Center hosts “Transculturation in Taiwan” conference

The UCLA Asia Pacific Center presented “Transculturation in Taiwan,” the 2023 UCLA-NTNU Taiwan Studies Initiative Conference, on Thursday and Friday, April 6-7, 2023. Hosted at Royce Hall’s Humanities Conference Room, this was the first time the annual conference was offered in person since 2019, following two online editions in recent years. Over 50 attendees joined the conference’s first day on Thursday, while approximately 40 attended on Friday.

Fifteen scholars presented their work in five panels convened over the two days, with additional scholars participating as moderators or opening and closing speakers. Shu-mei Shih, Irving and Jean Stone Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature, Asian Languages and Cultures, and Asian American Studies at UCLA, organized the event. The participants traveled from Taiwan and from six U.S. states as well as Washington DC. Among the presenters were four professors from National Taiwan Normal University: Joan Chiung-huei Chang, Iping Liang, Fang-Mei Lin, and Ian Rowen.

“Transculturation in Taiwan” focused on the cultural implications of Taiwan’s complex modern history in which various cultures and forces have encountered and clashed with each other. These include indigenous communities, Han settler colonialism, and exogenous colonialism originating from the Netherlands, Japan, China, and the U.S. Scholars who presented their research at the conference were rooted in a variety of humanities and social sciences disciplines. They examined media as diverse as literature, music, theater, puppetry, film, photography, political movements, tourism, and philosophy, incorporating sources from Taiwan as well as examples from other Sinophone areas and diaspora communities.

On Thursday, the first panel examined “Imperial Archipelagos.” Scholars presented on various historical and contemporary views of Taiwan as an island or archipelago by analyzing comparative cases such as Hawai‘i and the Philippines, while examining the impact of cross-Strait military tensions and analyzing different concepts of Taiwan in the context of tourism from the People’s Republic of China. Panel 2 turned the focus to “Indigeneity and the Settler Colonial Present.” The presenters considered Taiwan’s indigenous cultures and their impact on how Taiwanese view themselves in the contexts of East Asia and Austronesia. These papers included extensive discussion of literary works such as the 2014 novel Witch Way (巫旅) by Puyuma author Badai, and recent representations of indigenous communities in film.

Conference organizer Shu-mei Shih moderates the first panel on “Imperial Archipelagos.”

Panel 3 on Friday included three papers that considered representations of the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan (1895–1945). Laura Jo-han Wen and Fang-Mei Lin focused on cinema, with discussions of early war films and the Taiwanese language film The Bride Who Has Returned from Hell (itself an adaptation of an English Gothic romance novel). Jasmine Yu-Hsing Chen traced the history of Taiwanese puppetry and its depictions of Japan and Japanese swordsmen in this art form. The following panel, “Transculturation and Transcolonial Translations,” featured two presentations by Joan Chiung-huei Chang and Lucas Klein that analyzed various literary works and their relationships with Taiwanese and Sinophone canons, with particular attention to translation and discourses of multiculturalism. Lily Wong’s paper discussed transnational connections among social justice movements for decriminalization, demilitarization, and migrant labor justice in various anticolonial contexts.

The conference concluded with a Young Scholar Showcase highlighting the work of three graduate students from UCLA and National Chengchi University. Scholars on this panel analyzed wide-ranging sources from New Confucian philosophy, science fiction, video ethnography, and street photography.

Faculty and students who participated in the conference expressed gratitude for the opportunity to gather again in person and participate in stimulating scholarly exchanges. The presenters joined group dinners after each day and continued their discussions. Organizer Professor Shih noted that the conference had two goals.  In terms of content, she wished to bring the subject of transculturation, a scholarly concept that arose from the Caribbean experience, to the study of Taiwan as a comparative case, in order to broaden Taiwan studies. The second aim was to gather together younger scholars in Taiwan studies in the U.S. to connect with more senior scholars from Taiwan. Most of the American presenters are assistant professors, along with the three graduate students, the conference aimed to serve as an incubator of some sort for the next generation of scholars in Taiwan studies. The Asia Pacific Center looks forward to hosting future annual conferences as the UCLA-NTNU Taiwan Studies Initiative enters its seventh year.

APC Director Min Zhou speaks at the conclusion of the conference.