{"id":10134,"date":"2025-12-25T23:07:52","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T15:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/?p=10134"},"modified":"2025-12-29T20:19:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T12:19:31","slug":"conference-report-culture-wars-in-taiwan-languages-literature-identities-and-the-politics-of-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/2025\/12\/25\/conference-report-culture-wars-in-taiwan-languages-literature-identities-and-the-politics-of-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Conference Report: Culture Wars in Taiwan: Languages, Literature, Identities, and the Politics of Memory"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u3000\u3000On December 5, 2025, the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) hosted a full-day international conference entitled Culture Wars in Taiwan: Languages, Literature, Identities, and the Politics of Memory.<\/em> Also supported by the NTNU International Taiwan Studies Center, the conference brought together scholars from Taiwan, Japan, Europe, the United States, and Australia to examine how language, memory, media, and cultural politics shape contemporary debates over Taiwanese identity. Conducted entirely in English, the event reflected NTNU\u2019s growing role as a hub for international Taiwan Studies and offered multidisciplinary perspectives across the humanities and social sciences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u3000\u3000The conference opened in the morning with welcoming remarks from Professor Yin C. Chuang (\u838a\u4f73\u7a4e), Head of the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages and Literature at NTNU and an opening speech delivered by Professor Yao-Ting Sung (\u5b8b\u66dc\u5ef7), Executive Vice President and Research Chair at NTNU, who emphasized the importance of humanities-based inquiry for understanding Taiwan\u2019s linguistic diversity and contested historical narratives. Together, the opening speakers framed the workshop as an exploration of how \u201cculture wars\u201d in Taiwan are embedded in ongoing struggles over memory, language policy, and identity formation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u3000\u3000The keynote lecture, chaired by the distinguished literary scholar Professor Shih Shu-mei (\u53f2\u66f8\u7f8e) of UCLA and NTNU, was delivered by the internationally renowned sociologist Professor Shunya Yoshimi (\u5409\u898b\u4fca\u54c9), currently Professor in the Department of Tourism and Community Development at Kokugakuin University and former Vice President of The University of Tokyo. Entitled \u201cDialogue with AI Self: A Sociologist Starts to Fight Against AI Who\/Which Claims Being Himself,\u201d<\/em> the keynote introduced an original experiment in which Professor Yoshimi engaged in sustained dialogue with an AI trained on his own scholarly writings. Through this encounter, Yoshimi reflected on questions of authorship, intellectual labor, and the limits of artificial intelligence as a medium for sociological and societal inquiry, arguing that critical confrontation with AI is essential for preserving human creativity and intellectual responsibility in an increasingly automated society. This introduction was followed by a lively Q&A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u3000\u3000After a short coffee break, the discussions turned to questions of historical memory and cultural representation. Chaired by Dr. Corrado Neri (\u67ef\u6f22\u6771), Director of the CEFC Taipei, the first panel examined how colonial legacies and post-authoritarian memories continue to shape cultural politics in Taiwan and beyond. Professor Ann Heylen (\u8cc0\u5b89\u5a1f) addressed the Dutch colonial legacy in Taiwan and its reemergence in heritage branding and public memory, particularly in connection with the 400th anniversary of Tainan. Professor Yoshihisa Amae (\u5929\u6c5f\u559c\u4e45) explored Japanese colonial nostalgia in post\u2013martial law Taiwan, suggesting that contemporary engagements with Japanese modernity function as a strategy for reimagining Taiwanese identity. The panel concluded with Professor Sergio P\u00e9rez Torres (\u88f4\u7d39\u6b66), who presented a comparative analysis of Taiwanese and Spanish cinema as sites of post-authoritarian memory-making. Each talk inspired rich discussion in the Q&A sessions, with conversations continuing beyond the scheduled time and into lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u3000\u3000Later in the day, attention shifted to language, linguistics, and policy. A second panel, chaired by Professor Wei-Cheng Sam Jheng (\u912d\u5049\u6210) of Fu Jen Catholic University, focused on the sociolinguistic realities of Taiwanese society. Professor Hui-lu Khoo (\u8a31\u6167\u5982) offered a critical discussion of Taiwan\u2019s \u201cBilingual Nation 2030\u201d policy, highlighting its implications for local languages, mostly notably Taiwanese. Professor Seng-hian Lau (\u5289\u627f\u8ce2) continued with an analysis of Taiwanese sentence-final particles honnh<\/em> and hannh<\/em>, proposing the concept of \u201csentence-words\u201d to account for their distinctive syntactic and pragmatic properties. Professor Yu-ying Chuang (\u838a\u80b2\u7a4e) concluded the session with a corpus-based study of tonal neutralization in Taiwanese, demonstrating how prosodic boundaries and speaker variation shape tonal realization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u3000\u3000The final panel, chaired by Dr. Craig A. Smith (\u53f2\u5cfb) of the University of Melbourne, addressed questions of media, nationalism, and political behavior. Professor Huey-Rong Chen (\u9673\u6167\u84c9) examined contemporary Taiwanese television dramas, arguing that despite greater visibility of multilingualism, native-language characters are often denied narrative agency. Professor Yin C. Chuang traced changing Taiwanese perceptions of China across historical periods and within the contemporary landscape of popular culture and social media, while Dr. Sanho Chung (\u937e\u71ca\u8c6a) presented experimental research on voter tolerance for electoral clientelism at different levels of local elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u3000\u3000The day concluded with closing remarks chaired by Professor Ann Heylen (\u8cc0\u5b89\u5a1f), with reflections delivered by Professor Tsong-han Lee (\u674e\u5b97\u7ff0), Vice Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at NTNU. Overall, the conference highlighted the central role of academic exchange in advancing international understanding of Taiwan\u2019s cultural, linguistic, and intellectual landscapes. A banquet held in the evening provided further opportunities for informal exchange among participants, reinforcing the workshop\u2019s collaborative and international spirit. By fostering interdisciplinary dialogue and cross-border collaboration, the event contributed to ongoing efforts to strengthen global engagement with Taiwan Studies and to encourage future scholarly cooperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Corrina Gross \uff08\u9ad8\u7433\u5a1c\uff09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u3000\u3000On December 5, 2025, the Department of Taiwan Culture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,237],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-237","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10134"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10170,"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10134\/revisions\/10170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itsc.ntnu.edu.tw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}