Written by Wei-ting Liou.

Image credit: Learn – Education – Learning by go digital. / Flickr, license: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) offers an existentialist perspective of the Beat Generation. Oriental Buddhism, adventurous spirits, and the pursuit of an ultimate state of blessing (beatitudes) have become experiments to broaden writing horizons and deal with existential crises. Since its establishment in 1997 in Taiwan, Taiwan literary studies have remained in an existential position to deal with existential crises. Faced with epistemological crises, such as the debate between the Taiwanese ideological complex and the Chinese ideological complex in the 1980s, the disciplines, texts (within or outside Taiwan), periodisation, ethnic groups, and languages (in Chinese, Taiwanese Southern-min, Hakka, English, etc.) of Taiwanese literary studies are still under construction. Even the naming itself remains debatable as to whether to call it Taiwan literary studies or Taiwanese literary studies. 

I, too, had been wondering how to position myself academically when I initiated my master’s degree in the English department at Royal Holloway, University of London. Through the postgraduate courses in modernism and postcolonialism, I’ve figured out that Taiwan has its position in the world—the dissemination of European modernism from Europe to Asia and the colonial modernity imposed by Japanese rule over Taiwan (1895-1945) can be organically connected. In other words, worlding Taiwan through its literature has indicated an interdisciplinary possibility for me, as an English major. The idea of the colonial palimpsest of Taiwan literature, as the core of my PhD thesis, can map out the layers of the colonial history of Taiwan while, at the same time, linking other explanatory frameworks, such as postcolonialism and cultural studies. In my recent research, when addressing Taiwanese American literature written in English, Asian American studies, Chinese American Studies, cultural nationalism, and translation studies, I’ve found them interconnected and applied to my teaching. In my teaching, I have offered English-taught courses (EMI) regarding Taiwan literature and Taiwan culture since 2016. In the following passages, I will explore three routes of worlding Taiwan literature in my academic practice: translation studies, Taiwanese American literature in English, and EMI courses conducted in Taiwan. 

Translation has been my first way of worlding Taiwan literature, and it remains so. Since my college years in the English department, taking cases of translation has been a way to make extra money, though not an easy way. In my PhD years, due to the need to discuss different colonial layers of Taiwan literature, I translated relevant criticism in Chinese and some parts of the Chinese works by Taiwanese writers like Shitao Yeh, Ang Li, Zhuoliu Wu, Bai Xianyong, Syaman Rapongan, Tianxin Zhu, etc. I put them into my PhD thesis in English because not too many English translations were available then. In the final writing-up stage of PhD study, I took an academic case of translating parts of the literary history of Taiwan of Cambridge History of Chinese Literature (2010) into Chinese, published in Taiwan in 2017. In this translation process, I realised the construction of Taiwan’s literary history in the West should be based on the glocal practice and cooperation of both writers and translators. I also took translation cases about curation from the National Palace Museum. In my two years as an adjunct professor at the Lanyang campus, Tamkang University (2016-7), I translated several cases about the school and even took an interpretation case. All in all, these experiences in translation have equipped me with practical experiences, which I find quite beneficial now because I am offering a course on translation studies (on Taiwan literature) at my graduate institute. 

Thanks to my experiences in translation, I realised that perspectives in translation studies should be incorporated into my research on Taiwanese American literature in English, as this methodology has been well-established in Chinese American literary studies. Issues such as phonocentrism, the use of romanisations of Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese Southern-min, Austronesian languages, Taiwanese songs, and local folk stories in Taiwanese American English writing are potential materials to be examined in terms of translation studies. Taiwanese American literature in English has been my recent research focus. I dealt with the literature of the February 28th Incident as a chapter in my PhD thesis, and the trauma helped shed light on the formation of Taiwan’s cultural nationalism. There are generational differences in the writing of the February 28th Incident, and some works were published or circulated overseas, such as works disseminated to Japan, Hong Kong, and North America.  

Later, I noticed Shawna Yang’s Green Island (2016), translated into Chinese in 2016. That opened my gate to studying the English writing of second-generation Taiwanese American writers. Following previous scholars’ and writers’ contributions to this emerging genre, such as works by Joyce Huang, Hsin-Chin Hsieh, and Christopher Fan, as well as the holding of the 2022 Annual Conferences of Association for Taiwanese Literature: International Symposium on “Taiwan Literature in the World,” the academia of both Taiwan and the US has shown increasing interests in this genre that bridges Taiwan literature to the world. The past two decades since the millennium have witnessed the booming publication of Taiwanese American writers in English. The works by Hua Hsu, Tao Lin, K-ming Chang, Emily Pan, Shawna Yang, Ed Lin, etc., have acquired the cultural capital of English and gained the consecration of literary awards in the American literary field. The narrative of Taiwanese American writers serves as a mirror in Lacanian theory; it presents ethnic Taiwanese immigrants’ diasporic phenomenon. In addition, as this writing backfires through translation (e.g., the return narrative of the new interpretation of the February 28th Incident), it broadens and even reconfigures the understanding and scope of Taiwan literature. In the future, my humble dream, with exciting expectations, is to lecture in this genre with a compatible textbook.     

EMI courses on Taiwan literature and Taiwan culture tend to be my connection to the world, even though I currently offer classes in the middle of Taiwan. In my two years as an adjunct professor at the Lanyang campus, Tamkang University (2016-7), which was an English-taught campus, among other English proficiency courses that I offered such as English Writing, English Proficiency Test: IELTS, English Proficiency Test: IELTS, English for Conference and Meeting, I offered the EMI course on Taiwan literature for all the freshmen in this campus—Ability of Expressing in Spoken and Written Chinese: Appreciation of Selected Taiwan Literary Works in English. I used Voices from the Beautiful Island: Bilingual Taiwan Masterworks as the bilingual textbook (in English and Chinese), covering works by Dominic Cheung, Husluman Vava, Tian-xin Zhu, Qiao Lee, Ang Li, etc., and I added works to the syllabus like Orphan of Asia by Zhuoliu Wu, “State Funeral” by Bai Xian-yuan, “The Last Hunter” by Topas Tamapima, “The Large Stingray” by Syaman Rapongan, so on so forth.  

Apart from the texts, postcolonial theories (e.g., orientalism) and concepts of cultural studies (e.g., cultural hegemony) were integrated into the pedagogy. I have been conducting the EMI course, An Appreciation of Taiwan Literature, adopting similar materials above, at the National Changhua University of Education since 2019, adjusting works corresponding to the student’s level of English in these years. The movie Detention (2019) trailer was used to inspire students to carry out an assignment of creative writing about the February 28th Incident in 1947.  

In the other EMI course, Taiwan Culture, I used The Concise History of Taiwan, a bilingual textbook in Chinese and English, as my main teaching material before the midterm examination. After the midterm examination, I led students to explore different dimensions of Taiwan culture, and thus beverages (e.g., Bubble tea, oolong tea), buildings, music, arts, and religious practices (e.g., pilgrimages of Mazu) were conducted by my lectures, in-class activities (e.g., tea-tasting), and students’ presentation.  

Coming to the crossroads where machines, mobiles, new media, and AI have become crucial parts of a posthuman in the age of addiction, as the American Taiwanese writer Tao Lin has shown in his post-Beat Generation writing, I believe the existential crisis of Taiwan literary studies, as well as other humanities subjects, has led us to challenge the “essence” rather than the “existence” of the established discipline of this subject. Thus, like the momentum carried by the emerging Taiwanese American literary studies, let’s welcome the future of Taiwan literary studies, in which interdisciplinary studies like Anthropocene, Neganthropocene, Posthuman studies, Ecocriticism, and transmedia studies, etc., can be the stimuli to reshape the conventional epistemology of Taiwan literary studies.  

 
Dr Wei-ting Liou’s academic journey began with a BA in the English Department at National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan. He then pursued his MA and PhD degrees in English at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, with his PhD thesis focusing on the colonial palimpsest of Taiwan literature. He began his full-time academic position at the Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, National Changhua University of Education in middle Taiwan. His teaching and research interests focus on postcolonialism, translation studies, Taiwanese American literature in English, and posthuman studies. He has been offering EMI courses on Taiwan literature since 2016. 

This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘Global Taiwan Literature’.