Remapping Taiwan: Histories and Cultures in the Context of Globalization

By Shu-mei Shih

Remapping Taiwan: Histories and Cultures in the Context of Globalization


The Fifth Annual Conference on the History and Cultures of Taiwan at the University of California, Los Angeles, October 13-15, 2000


The "Remapping Taiwan" conference aims to promote research on Taiwan's history and culture in relation to the political, economic, and cultural changes brought about by globalization. How do global processes affect Taiwan's culture in terms of its production and circulation? How do global processes release or repress multiple, diverse, and alternative memories and cultures? What voices and identities emerge or become suppressed? What cultural forms become sanctioned or marginalized? How do various cultural forms confront and negotiate the sea change of globalization in a volatile political environment of emergent democracy and diplomatic isolation?

Exploring an exciting array of dimensions of Taiwan culture and society, such as religion, film, music, built environment, ethnography, and literature, and dealing with such timely issues as decolonization, identity, ethnicity, sexuality, and consumption in their transnational mediations, the conference offers new and critical insights on contemporary Taiwan society. Cross-generational scholars and students of Taiwan will be gathered at UCLA for three days of in-depth dialogues and exchanges. The general audience is also welcome. The conference is free and open to the public.

Supported by funds from: Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange; Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles; Comparative and Interdisciplinary Research on Asia, UCLA

Conference Schedule

October 13, Friday
Location: Kerckhoff Hall, State Room

8:30 am - 9:45 am Registration

9:45 am - 10:00 am Opening Remarks

10:00 am - 11:50 am Panel I. Cultural Consumption in the Global Era

Ping-hui Liao (National Tsing-hua University, Taiwan)

Theorizing the 1990s

Joseph Wicentowski (Harvard University)

Narrating the Native: Mapping the Tea Art Houses of Taipei

Ming-chun Ku (New School for Social Research)

Ramen in Taiwan: Transnational Cultural Consumption, and Reflections on Theories of Cultural Globalization

Yu-fen Ko (Shih-hsin University, Taiwan)

Hello Kitty and Identity Politics in Taiwan

Moderator: Douglas Kellner (University of California, Los Angeles)

11:50 am - 1:10 pm Lunch Break

1:10 pm - 2:40 pm Panel II. Public Space in a Globalized City

(Kerckhoff Hall, State Room)

Ruei-suei Sun (University of California, Los Angeles)

So, We Are Gonna Have a Real "Global City"? — Contesting the Recent Debate on Global City Formation and Its Reformulation in Taipei

Joseph Allen (University of Minnesota)

Traces of Ethnic Tension in the Taipei Public Space: Taipei New Park

Kelly Chien-hui Kuo (University of Nottingham, UK)

An-other Nihilism: An Euphoria of Transcultural Hybridity

Moderator: Daphne Lei (Stanford University)

2:40 pm - 3:00 pm Break

3:00 pm - 4:30 pm Panel III. Memory, Decolonization, & Everyday Life

Marshall Johnson (University of Wisconsin-Superior)

Fractals of Domination: Neoliberal Globalization of Taiwan Memories

Gang Xu (Bard College)

Sing-song Girls of the Globe

Grace Yueh-Ying Chen (University of Georgia)

Social Change and Collective Memory: Taiwan's Two Pasts

Moderator: Yue Meng (University of California, Irvine)

4:30 pm - 4:40 pm Break

4:40 pm - 5:50 pm Panel IV. Religion, Ethnicity, & Modernity

Murray Rubinstein (Baruch College, City University of New York)

Charting Responses to Modernity in Taiwan's Religious Communities

Kun-hui Ku (King's College, Cambridge)

Christianity from the Prism of the Paiwan

Moderator: David Schaberg (University of California, Los Angeles)

 

October 14, Saturday
Location: Faculty Center, Sequoia Room

9:00 am - 10:30 am Panel V. Marking the Space of Cultural Hybridity in Taiwan's Cinema

Yomi Braester (University of Washington)

Shards of Memory: "Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing?" and the Demolished Spaces of Taiwan Urban Cinema

[Braester, "The Dream of Flying: Taipei and Beijing Cinematic Poetics of Demolition." Paper published in Tamkang Review (Summer 2000)]

Yingjin Zhang (Indiana University)

Cinematic Remapping of Taipei: Cultural Hybridization, Heterotopias, and Postmodernity

Moderator: Nick Browne (University of California, Los Angeles)

10:30 am- 10:40 am Break

10:40 am - 12:10 pm Panel VI. Power, Politics, & Historical Memory

Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang (University of Texas, Austin)

Competing Legitimacy Principles: On Mainstream Literary Production in Contemporary Taiwan

Letty Chen (Washington University)

History under Siege: Anxiety of Global Culturation

Ming-Bao Yue (University of Hawaii, Manoa)

"There's No Place Like Home": The Trans/National Making of Chinese Subjects through Taiwan Films of the 1960s and 1970s

Moderator: Yenna Wu (University of California, Riverside)

12:10 pm - 1:10 pm Lunch Break

1:10 pm - 3:00 pm Panel VII. The Play of Identity and Performance

(Faculty Center, Sequoia Room)

Yi-Chun Tricia Lin (Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York)

Snaps of a Childhood Revisited: Music and Taiwanese Identity

Chun-bin Chen (University of Chicago)

Remapping Taiwan Musically: the Use of Translocal/Transnational Elements and the Narratives of Local Experiences in Jutoupi's Music

Alice Chu (University of Texas, Austin)

Call-in Shows in Taiwan: Verbal Performance in discourses of Transnational and Multiethnic Identities

Andrew Morris (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo)

Ninja Catchers & Chivalrous Eagles: Taiwan Baseball & a Globalized Taiwan Identity

Moderator: Nancy Guy (University of California, San Diego)

3:00 pm - 3:20 pm Break

3:20 pm - 4:30 pm Panel VIII. Spaces of Transnationality

John E. Wills (University of Southern California)

More Luzon Than Hainan: Taiwan before Qing Rule

Pei-chia Lan (University of California, Berkeley)

Remapping Identities across Borders and at Home: Filipina Migrant Domestic Workers & Taiwanese Employers

Moderator: Ted Huters (University of California, Los Angeles)

4:30 pm - 4:40 pm Break

4:40 pm - 6:10 pm Panel IX. The Geography of Sexual Identity

Liang-ya Liou (National Taiwan University)

At the Intersection of the Local and the Global: Representations of Male Homosexuality in Fictions by Pai Hsien-yung, Li Ang, Chu Tien-wen, and Chi Ta-wei

Antonia Chao (Tunghai University, Taiwan)

Banjia/Moving House: A Materialist Analysis of Taiwan¹s Lesbian Identity Formation from the 1950s to the 1970s

Ta-wei Chi (University of California, Los Angeles)

Castro Street in Taiwan: Imagining Queer Communities on the Internet

Moderator: Mirana May Szeto (University of California, Los Angeles)

October 15, Sunday
Location: Faculty Center, Sequoia Room

9:00 am - 10:50 am Panel X. Rooting and Globalism

(Faculty Center, Sequoia Room)

Hsin-yi Lu (University of Washington, Seattle)

Crafting Locality in the Global Village: Local Cultural Workers in a Taiwanese Region

Scott Wilson (Stanford University)

The Invisible Ones: The Production & Flow of Cultural Meaning Among the Hakka of Taipei

Jeffrey Hou (University of California, Berkeley)

Cultural Production of Environmental Activism: Two Cases in Southern Taiwan

Allen Chun (Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica)

The Great Illusion: The Long History of Multiculturalism in an Era of Invented Indigenization

Moderator: Mayfair Yang (University of California, Santa Barbara / Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)

10:30 am - 10:50 am Break

10:50 am - 12:40 pm Panel XI. Fighting Genders

Nicholas A. Kaldis (University of Minnesota)

Monogamorphous Desires, Faltering Forms: Culture Content and Style in Chen Kuo-fu's "Zhenghun Qishi"

Yi-ling Chen (Rutgers University)

Gender Roles or Gender Relations: Reexamining Taiwan's Housing Studies

Anru Lee (California State University, Sacramento)

Women of the Sisters' Hall: Gender and the Making of Personhood in Taiwan's Yiguan dao (The Unity Way)

Moderator: Letty Chen (Washington University)

 


Published: Friday, October 13, 2000