NATSA 2018: North American Taiwan Studies Association 2018 Annual Conference The University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX, United States, May 24-26, 2018

Beyond an Island:  Taiwan in Comparative Perspective

May 24-26, 2018

Abstract submission Deadline: December 15, 2017

Scholarship has approached Taiwan through comparison under various contexts. The Cold War structure inspired the study of Taiwan either as exceptions to global norms or as proxies to China Studies. The social and cultural liberalization brought by democratization further prompted scholarship to search for Taiwan’s subjectivity, comparing and contrasting with other political entities that also had colonization experiences. Amid the pressure of globalization, disciplines still share the comparative common ground but diverge on their goals of studying Taiwan. Some scholars treat Taiwan Studies as case studies and seek to test the universality of models and theories developed elsewhere. Other scholars see Taiwan Studies as battlegrounds for epistemological anti-imperialism, attempting to challenge the centrality of Euro-American discourses by exporting locally-produced theories to “creolize” processes of knowledge production in Western academia. Despite the divergent goals, through the lens of comparison, Taiwan Studies claims a nexus of intellectual inquiries that both commands and benefits from scholarship produced elsewhere, especially beyond the purview of Western academia.

The 24th Annual Conference of the North American Taiwan Studies Association (NATSA) seeks to build upon, engage in, and further promote the idea of “Taiwan in Comparison.” With a comparative angle, the significance of studying Taiwan comes less from a pure gaze at Taiwan, but more from relaying Taiwan to multiple “elsewheres.” The comparative perspective provides an opportunity for scholars to reconceptualize Taiwan and redefine the relevance of Taiwan (to whom and to what) in our time, and it opens up a chance to re-regionalize or re-territorialize Taiwan in knowledge production. Through comparison, the 24th conference also aims to deepen our understanding of what aspects of Taiwan provides valuable insight in different disciplines and amid what theoretical debates Taiwan is an indispensable case. The ultimate goal of introducing comparative perspective queries why, how, and on what ground Taiwan studies is essential for our understanding of the world.

Our emphasis on “Taiwan in Comparison” defines “comparison” generously. Comparison can be across time and space, languages and ideas, events and incidents, species and groups, etc. The object of comparison can be either visible or unseen, material or conceptual. We also encourage lateral associations amid Taiwan and other Southeast Asian countries and/or Sinophone societies. These lateral comparisons help transcend the silos of each national genre or tradition. We aim at critical reflections on the conceptual presuppositions, historical premises, and theoretical (even epistemological) grounds to which Taiwan as a case can meaningfully contribute. We also aspire to situate Taiwan on the map of world knowledge with the potential to allow Taiwan studies to travel beyond a dialogic relation between the island and an Western scholarship.

List of Topics

NATSA welcomes panels as well as individual papers from all disciplines that address Taiwan from a comparative perspective. We especially welcome panels that compare Taiwan, or any aspect of Taiwan, with findings from other regions/languages to engage in a theoretical debate. Potential topics for comparison include, but not limited to, the following issues:

• Geographical Connection/Relationship/Partnership e.g. Taiwan and the others; Pacific Rim communities; East Asian cities; borders and boundaries; territories and territorial disputes, (im)migration and refugee studies; Southbound Policy; natural disasters and extreme weather, etc.
• Periodisation in a Global Context e.g. colonial, postcolonial, and neo-colonial times; settler colonialism; oceanic history and tidalectics; diaspora and identity; globalization and localism; “China Rising,” etc. 
• The Cold War Structure and Beyond e.g. war and empire; alliance blocs and institutional agents; political rhetoric and propaganda; media and “alternative facts”; nuclear imagination; oral history and kinesthetic memory, etc.
• State, Society, and Governance in Comparison e.g authoritarian penetration and resistance; democratization; digital civil society; cyber-protest; participatory budgeting/democracy; technology in governance; relational sociology; urban renewal, population ageing, comparative welfare states, etc.
• Arts and Cultural Forms in Global Circulation e.g. Austronesian languages; Sinophone studies; oceanic literature; island literature; world literary system; translation and adaptation; censorship and cultural sensibility; affect and emotion; conceptual history; literary ecocriticism, etc.
• New Paradigms and Challenges e.g. digital humanities; post developmental state model; politics of diversity; LGBTQ rights; transitional justice; education/curriculum reform; judicial reform; legal consciousness, etc.
• Other Taiwan cases as paradigms, anomalies, or puzzles in canonical theories or existing frameworks may reformulate or rehistoricize the visual, spatial, non-anthropocentric or other “turns”

Papers and panels proposals that fall outside of the theme are still very welcome and will be considered fully and equally.

Submission Link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=natsa2018

Submission Guidelines

An abstract (300 words) and a brief biography (100 words) should be submitted before December 15, 2017 (5:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time). Decisions about acceptance will be based on academic merit after a thorough review process. Acceptance notification will be sent before March 1, 2018.  Once accepted, the full paper should be submitted no later than April 30, 2018. All the papers are required to be written and presented in English. 

Paper Submission Rule

To be considered, a complete submission must include an Abstract and Personal Bio. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words (title not included), and should communicate:

• The paper's objectives, theoretical framework, and key arguments.
• The methodologies and/or sources upon which the arguments are based.
• Intellectual contributions and broader social impacts (if any).
• The relationship (if any) to the conference theme or a sub-theme.

Your abstract should be informative to both scholars working within the specialized areas of your work, and as much as possible, to a wider readership.

Please also list 3 to 5 keywords for your paper and the 2 to 3 disciplines to which your paper is most closely related (this will be used to help us select reviewers for your abstract). Submissions missing any section(s) will not be considered by the organizing committee.

Panel Submission Rule

We encourage panel organizers to include at least one relatively junior scholar (either graduate student or recent graduate) in their panels. All Panel Submissions must include the following:

• A panel title and individual paper titles to be included in the panel.
• A 300-word statement of purpose for the entire panel identifying the broader issue involved, the relevance of each paper to this issue, and how the panel discussion may contribute to this debate.
• 3 to 5 keywords for your paper and the 2 to 3 disciplines to which your paper is most closely related (this will be used to help us select reviewers for your panel). Keywords and disciplines preferences are not necessary for each panel paper.
• A 300-word abstract of each paper in the panel following the instructions above for individual paper submissions.
• A full list of participants (three to four participants for each panel). Please specify the main organizer of the panel

Submission Link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=natsa2018

Important Dates

Committees

Program Committee

• Co-Program Director: Wei-Ting Yen
• Co-Program Director: Ying-Fen Chen

Organizing committee

• President: Shu-Wen Tang
• Secretary: Sandy Tseng

Venue

The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to

NATSA 2018 Co-Program Director, natsa.pd@na-tsa.org

NATSA Secretary, secretary@na-tsa.org

Submission Link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=natsa201