Date: Friday 27 May 2022
Time: 12.00pm-1.00pm AEST
Location: Online event
Talks in Chinese Humanities
About this event
This talk examines the oceanic discourse in Taiwan literature with a focus on Syaman Rapongan, whose seafaring writing goes beyond the political arena and the long-established cross-Strait dynamic and is well grounded in Taiwan’s Indigenous literature. This talk is divided into two parts. The first part takes into account the overlapping of Taiwan’s Indigenous literature and marine literature with a survey of Rapongan’s literary journey as an Indigenous writer, his cultural resistance against the island-state, and his love of the ocean. The second part provides a critical analysis of Rapongan’s Floating Dreams in the Ocean (大海浮夢, 2014) and Mata nu Wawa (大海之眼, 2018). Rapongan provides a deconstructive critique of the Han Chinese-dominated ideology in Taiwan and employs the Pacific Ocean as an expansive, all-encompassing entity across geographical, racial, ethnic, and national boundaries. Rapongan’s writing strategy sheds light on the heated discussions of the reproduction of Taiwan’s Indigeneity in response to the oceanic discourse of Taiwan. Through an Indigenous lens, Rapongan’s works help reshape Taiwan literature and connect Taiwan with the global Indigenous community via ocean passages.
About the speakers
Chia-rong Wu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global, Cultural and Language Studies at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Dr. Wu received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. He specializes in Sinophone literature and film through the lens of postcolonial theories, indigenous studies, diaspora, and ecocriticism. Dr. Wu is the author of Supernatural Sinophone Taiwan and Beyond (Cambria Press, 2016) and Remapping the Contested Sinosphere: The Cross-cultural Landscape and Ethnoscape of Taiwan (Cambria Press, 2020). His third book project is entitled Taiwan Literature in the 21st Century, which is a collection of research essays co-edited by Dr. Wu and Professor Ming-ju Fan (National Chengchi University). This edited volume is under contract with Springer.
Sophia Huei-Ling Chen (host) is a third-year PhD candidate in Chinese Studies at University of Sydney. Her thesis examines the theme of transnational mobility and the technique of genre subversion in contemporary queer fiction from Taiwan.
“Talks in Chinese Humanities” are co-presented by the China Studies Centre, the Department of Chinese Studies, the Australian Society for Asian Humanities and the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture at UNSW.