Book Launch: 'A Taiwanese Ecoliterature Reader'
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
11:00 am to 12:30 pm
- Venue
- SOAS Main Building
- Room
- C429
- Event type
- Launch
About this event
The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to welcome Dr Ian Rowen and Dr Ti-Han Chang to share the new edited volume, A Taiwanese Ecoliterature Reader.
An Indigenous hunter laments the decline in the flying squirrel population and reflects on how animals perceive the world. In a drought-stricken cyberpunk anytown, kids revolt against the grown-ups only to face off with stray dogs over water. During late-night diving sessions, a researcher encounters a mysterious group of ocean-dwelling people with gills. In an overpopulated future, marrying an AI spouse will raise a human’s credit score. A man follows the trail of an extinct leopard, seeking to unravel a metafictional mystery left behind by his late wife.
This anthology showcases cutting-edge works on ecological themes by essential and emerging Taiwanese authors, revealing the vitality of their engagements with environmental crises. Taiwan is a biodiversity hotspot and geopolitical flashpoint, home to both Indigenous peoples and settlers. The pieces collected in A Taiwanese Ecoliterature Reader give voice to this human and more-than-human diversity, telling tales that are disturbing yet hopeful, serious yet sensuous, speculative yet grounded, down to earth yet spanning the seas. They span Indigenous eco-writing, oceanic hybrid narratives, ecological sci-fi, and speculative Indigenous fiction. Together, these stories navigate the landscapes of Taiwanese ecoliterature, illuminating its past and pointing toward its future.
About the speakers
Ian Rowen is Associate Professor at the Kyushu University Institute for Advanced Study. He previously served as Associate Professor at National Taiwan Normal University and Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the author of One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism (Cornell University Press, 2023) and editor of Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror (Cambria Press, 2021).
Ti-han Chang is the Deputy Director of the Centre of Taiwan Studies and a Senior Teaching Fellow in Taiwan Studies at SOAS University of London. xHer research lies at the intersection of literature, cinema, and politics in Taiwan, with a particular focus on eco-literature and its implications in the Pacific and global context. She is especially interested in postcolonial ecocriticism and its connections to themes such as nonhuman agency, borders, identity politics, climate change, and migration. Beyond her literary and cultural work, she also engages with broader debates in Taiwan studies, including traditional Indigenous knowledge, gender equality issues, and environmental sustainability.
Image credit: Emma Henderson via Unsplash
