Conferences

Workshop with Representatives from National Taiwan Normal University, 8 July 2015

On 8 July 2015, the two sinological departments at Ruhr University Bochum hosted a workshop with representatives from National Taiwan Normal University (Guoli Taiwan Shifan Daxue 國立臺灣師範大學) on "Current Topics of Research in and on Taiwan – Social and Legal History, Philosophy, and Literature". 
The workshop took place in connection with the signing of an agreement between the Faculty and NTNU's College of Liberal Arts. The planned agreement will help to facilitate the exchange of academic personnel between the two institutions and enable two students each year to study at the respective partner institution with no tuition. The visit and workshop were jointly sponsored by the Cultural Division of the Taipei Representative Office in Berlin and the Research Unit.

Workshop Taiwan: Refuge, Province, Colony, or What?, 8–9 July 2011

This workshop for graduate students and lecturers was organised in cooperation with the Department of Chinese History and Phi­los­o­phy. Invited guest speakers were Nadin Heé (Berlin), Liu I ling (Kaohsiung), and Tsukahara Togo (Kobe).

International Symposium Taiwan literature off the mainstream, 5–6 November 2010

The Research Unit hosted an international symposium on Taiwan literature off the mainstream: Between languages, ethnicities and media in cooperation with the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Culture, Languages, and Literature of National Taiwan Normal University.

Invited participants:

• Raoul D. Findeisen (Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia)
• Faye Yuan Kleeman (University of Colorado, USA)
• Li Khin-huann 李勤岸 (National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan)
• Liou Liang-ya 劉亮雅 (National Taiwan University, Taiwan)
• Daryll Sterk (University of Alberta, Canada)
• Crystal Sun Chia-Sui 孫嘉穗 (National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan)

2nd Conference of the European Association of Taiwan Studies, 1–2 April 2005

Friday, 1 April

Panel 1: Taiwan's External Relations

Chair: Phil Deans (SOAS)

• Wu Chi-jen (SOAS)
  Comparative Study of Hong Kong and Taiwan's Economic Integration with Mainland China
  Discussant: Wolfgang Klenner (Ruhr University Bochum)
• Esteban, Mario (CEAO, Madrid)
  Will Political Liberalisation of Mainland China Reduce the Risk of Military Conflict in the Taiwan Strait?
  Discussant: Masako Ikegami (Stockholm University)
• Ikegami, Masako
  Assessing the Risk of Armed Conflict across the Taiwan Straits.
  Discussant: Phil Deans (SOAS)
• Muyard, Frank (French Centre for Research on Contemporary China, Taipei)
  From a Two-Chinas situation to a Taiwanese nation in the making.
  Realpolitik, national myths and the American factor in the evolution of Taiwan national politics.
  Discussant: Masako Ikegami (Stockholm University)

Panel 2: Taiwan Literature

Chair: Henning Klöter (Ruhr University Bochum)

• Marchand, Sandrine (Artois University)
  Utopia and nostalgia: Convergence of two ideals in Chen Yingzhen and Chen Jo-hsi short stories
  Discussant: Anna Maria Paoluzzi (University of Rome)
• Fan Ming-ju (National Taipei University)
  The Sense of Place in Hwang Chun-ming's fiction
  Discussant: Rüdiger Breuer (Ruhr University Bochum)
• Paoluzzi, Anna Maria (University of Rome)
  From literary pieces to movies: different approaches to intersemiotic translation in modern Taiwan culture
  Discussant: Mark Harrison (Westminster University)
• Laureillard, Marie (Sorbonne University)
  The image of women in the work of Guo Songfen
  Discussant: Rüdiger Breuer (Ruhr University Bochum)

Panel 3: Taiwan Election Studies

Chair: Dafydd Fell (SOAS)

• Allio, Fiorella (CNRS, Paris)
  The dual processes of mobilization and participation during Taiwan's 2004 legislative election
  Discussant: Dafydd Fell (SOAS)
• Lee, Joseph (University of London)
  Political battles in the Courts: Justice or Democracy?
  Discussant: Phil Deans (SOAS)

Panel 4: Language, Education and Identity

Chair: Chang Bi-yu (LSE)

• Baran, Dominika (Harvard University)
  'Taiwanese doesn't have culture': Language ideologies and social identity in Taiwan's education system
  Discussant: Ann Heylen (Ruhr University Bochum)
• Lams, Lutgard
  ‘What’s in a Name’: Implications of Linguistic Strategies and Labeling Practices in PRC/ROC Official as well as
  English-Language Media Discourse on the Cross-Strait Issue and Domestic Taiwanese Politics
  Discussant: Henning Klöter (Ruhr University Bochum)
• Price, Gareth (University of Essex)
  The Language Barrier? Analysing English Language Education in Taiwan
  Discussant: Henning Klöter (Ruhr University Bochum)

Panel 5: Taiwan's Party Politics

Chair: Masako Ikegami (Stockholm University)

• Fell, Dafydd (SOAS)
  Failure and Success of Third Parties in Taiwan
  Discussant: Gunter Schubert (University of Tubingen)
• Halbeisen, Hermann (University of Cologne)
  KMT: the Chinese Nationalist Party turning into a Taiwanese Centrist Party?
  Discussant: Dafydd Fell (SOAS)
• Lin Chiung-chu (University of Essex)
  Party Image and Taiwan's Electorate, 1992-2000
  Discussant: Gunter Schubert (University of Tubingen)

Panel 6: Formosan Taiwan

Chair: Ann Heylen (Ruhr University Bochum)

• Simon, Scott (University of Ottawa)
  Taiwan's Indigenized Constitution: What Place for Aboriginal Formosa?
  Discussant: Joseph Lee (University of London)
• Adelaar, Alexander (University of Melbourne)
  Aboriginal Languages of Taiwan: The Case of Siraya
  Discussant: Ann Heylen
• Klöter, Henning (Ruhr University Bochum)
  Facts and Fantasy about Favorlang: Early European encounters with Taiwan's languages
  Discussant: Alexander Adelaar

Saturday, 2 April

Panel 7: Taiwan's Economics and Political Economy

Chair: Robert Ash (SOAS)

• Leou Chia-feng (SOAS)
  Financial Reforms and Institutional Constraints: The DPP's Policy U-turn on the reform of the
  credit units of the farmers' and fishermen's associations
  Discussant: Steven Wang (Stockholm University)
• Wang, Steven (Stockholm University)
  Those Less Favored: The Taiwanese SMEs in Predicaments
  Discussant: Joseph Lin (SOAS)
• Veselka, Marco (University of Heidelberg)
  Taiwan's Economic Development: The Role of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises beyond the Statistics
  Discussant: Wolfgang Klenner (Ruhr University Bochum)
• Sun Chia-sui (National Dong Hwa University, Hualien)
  Political Economy of Books as an Alternative Medium: Publishing and Social Movements
  Discussant: Robert Ash (SOAS)

Panel 8: Culture and Society

Chair: Rüdiger Breuer (Ruhr University Bochum)

• Chang Bi-yu (LSE)
  Reclaiming cultural ownership - Indigenous xiqu and the construction of Taiwanese identity
  Discussant: Fiorella Allio (CNRS, Paris)
• Shih Fang-long (London School of Economics)
  Continuity and Change between the KMT and DPP Government Responses to Religion
  Discussant: Fiorella Allio (CNRS, Paris)
• Lee Wei-I (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris)
  The Construction of Community Imaginaries in Taiwan's Museums and Archives Committees (1945–1978)
  Discussant: Chang Bi-yu (LSE)
• Harrison, Mark (Westminster University)
  Towards a 'Taiwan Studies'
  Discussant: Stuart Thompson (SOAS)

Panel 9: Issues in Taiwanese Political Studies

• Damm, Jens (Freie University Berlin)
  Taiwan's Transformation: Successes and Failures
  Discussant: Hermann Halbeisen (University of Cologne)
• Deans, Phil (SOAS)
  News Of Virtue Travels Quicker Than Messages Sent By Post: Isolation, Identity and
  Stamps As Vehicles For Regime Legitimation on Taiwan
  Discussant: Jean Pierre Cabestan (CNRS)
• King, Winnie (St. Antony's College, University of Oxford)
  How Cross-Strait Economics has strengthened Taiwan's political system: the impact of Economic Actors
  Discussant: Robert Ash (SOAS)
• Kucera, Ondrej (Palacky University, Olomouc)
  Is Taiwan a Presidential System? A Critical Review: An Attempt on the Classification of the Taiwanese System of Government
  Discussant: Jean Pierre Cabestan (CNRS)

Panel 10: Taiwan's History

Chair: Shih Fang-long

• Heylen, Ann (Ruhr University Bochum)
  Personal Documents in Modern Taiwanese Historiography
  Discussant: Stuart Thompson (SOAS)
• Storm, Carsten (University of Dresden)
  Images of Anti Japanese Resistance and Identity in Taiwanese Novels
  Discussant: Ann Heylen (Ruhr University Bochum)
• Chen, Elsa Hsiang-chun (University of Leeds)
  Reading Taiwan and the Issue of Difference in a Global/Local Frame:
  Epitaph by Wu Mali in Sadness Transformed: 2:28 Commemorative Art Exhibition in Taiwan in 1997
  Discussant: Lut Lams (KU Brussel)
• Thompson, Stuart (SOAS)
  In the eye of the beholder: (over)interpreting a funerary taboo
  Discussant: Ann Heylen

Literature Symposium New Approaches to Taiwan Literature, 8–9 November 2004

Monday, 8 November

Opening speech

• Roderich Ptak
  Taiwan: From Barrier to Bridge

Perspectives on Taiwan Literature

• Lin Juei-ming
  邁向台灣學：臺灣文學研究的回顧與展望 [Marching towards Taiwan Studies:
  The Past and Future of the Study of Taiwan Literature]
• Li Xiangping
  解讀臺灣——以兩岸知識者關於臺灣文學史的敍事為例 [Understanding Taiwan: The narration of
  Taiwan’s literary history by scholars of the two sides of the Taiwan Strait]

Taiwan Literature in the Japanese Period (1895–1945) (I)

• Chen Wan-yi
  賴和與魯迅——以「國民性」化與為中心的比較 [Lai He and Lu Xun: A comparison focusing on the
  discourse of “national character”]
• Ann Heylen
  Narrating Cultural Problems, Hopes and Obsessions in Cai Peihuo’s Autobiographical Writing:
  A Thematic Reading in Colonial Thought
• Lin Ming-teh
  細讀賴和〈一桿稱仔〉[A close reading of Lai He’s Yi gan chengzi]

Taiwan Literature in the Japanese Period (1895–1945) (II)

• Lin Pei-yin
  A Forgotten Canon? Wu Mansha, Wind and Moon and Popular Literature in Taiwan’s Japanese Period
• Mei Chia-ling
  身體政治與青春想像：日據時期的台灣小說 [Body Politics and Imaginary Youth: Taiwan Fiction in the Japanese Period]
• Joyce Liu Chi-hui  進步、頹廢與社會體：台灣三０年代頹廢意識的可見與不可見——從新文學運動、    《南音》到楊熾昌
  [The progressive, the decadent and the social body: On the visible and the invisible of the decadent
  consciousness in Taiwan during the 1930s: From the New Literature Movement and Nanyin to Yang Chichang]

The “Taiwaneseness” of Taiwanese Fiction: Cultural and Linguistic Aspects

• Ch’iu Kuei-fen
  跨文化流動與台灣現代主義文學的「台灣性」[Transnational cultural flows and the “Taiwaneseness” of Taiwan’s Modernist Fiction]
• Henning Klöter
  Linguistic Diversity in Taiwanese Fiction

Tuesday, 9 November

Taiwanese Poetry

• Chen Fang-ming
  《現代詩》與早期現代詩學的引進——紀弦詩論的再閱讀 [The magazine Contemporary Poetry and the
  introduction of early modern poetics: Another reading of Ji Xian’s critical writings on poetry]
• Lloyd Haft
  Man, the No-Measure of No-Things: Body and Focus in the Poetry of Zhou Mengdie

Taiwanese Literates (I)

• Christopher Lupke
  The Natural Nation: Political and Aesthetic Dimensions of Huang Chunming’s Xiangtu Imagery
• Anna Maria Paoluzzi
  Family and Society in Wang Zhenhe’s Narrative: A Metaphor for the Dichotomy of Tradition and Innovation?

Taiwanese Literates (II)

• Peng Hsiao-yen
  歷史、虛構與解嚴後眷村作家 [History, Fiction, and Post-Martial Law Writers from “Soldiers’ Villages”]
• Christina Neder
  Goethe and Taiwan Literature: “Goethe’s Passions” 歌德激情書 (2003) by Zhong Zhao­zhen

Workshop Transformation! Innovation? Taiwan in her cultural dimensions, 7–9 March 2001

During this three-day workshop, scholars and graduate students were invited to explore the different facets of cultural development on Taiwan. Taiwan's chequered history has led to widespread discussion of the new self-image of the Taiwanese people and a specifically Taiwanese cultural identity which is reflected, e.g., in literature, art, theatre and film. The workshop was intended to shed new light on these issues and generated an intensive discussion of potential new approaches to cultural and literary research in the field of Taiwan studies.