Recent News
Talk by Professor Tarō Yokoyama, Rikkyō University: “The Body History of Nō: From Demons to Cyborgs”
Event: 2026 Symposium on Asian Indigeneity
2026 Symposium on Asian Indigeneity
(Hosted by the Center for Taiwan Studies and American Indian & Indigenous Studies)
This interdisciplinary symposium brings together emerging scholars whose work highlights the interconnections among Indigenous communities across Asia and the Pacific. Through research on activism, political violence, peacebuilding, and cultural revitalization, the event advances conversations on social justice and the transformative possibilities of Indigenous knowledge and collaboration (RSVP).
Date: January 28, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Speakers
• Yi-Yu (Larry) Lai (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa)
• Maisnam Arnapal (UC Santa Barbara)
• Krisharyanto Umbu Deta (UC Santa Barbara)
• Yi-Yu (Larry) Lai (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa)
• Maisnam Arnapal (UC Santa Barbara)
• Krisharyanto Umbu Deta (UC Santa Barbara)
Moderator
Dr. Maung Ting Nyeu (Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, UCSB)
Dr. Maung Ting Nyeu (Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, UCSB)
11/20: Before the Wave: Art Film Culture in Cold War Taiwan
Title: Before the Wave: Art Film Culture in Cold War Taiwan
Speaker: Dr. I-Lin Liu (Chiu Research Fellow in Taiwan Studies, Oregon State University)
Time: November 20 (Thursday), 2:00 – 3:30 PM PST
Zoom Information: https://ucsb.
This presentation examines the reception of art cinema discourses and films in Cold War–era Taiwan—a postcolonial developing nation-state that both benefited from and was constrained by the postwar order of Pax Americana. Drawing on transnational and nontheatrical film and media studies approaches, it challenges the conventional historical narrative centered on the 1982 emergence of Taiwan New Cinema (TNC). Prevailing periodizations often dismiss pre-TNC Taiwanese film culture as a cultural wasteland dominated by propaganda, shallow writing, and middlebrow commercialism.
By tracing how Taiwanese critics, filmmakers, and bureaucrats engaged with international art cinema discourses, this research reveals that art cinema provided a vital framework for negotiating Taiwan’s postwar political and economic transformations. It highlights how an East Asian authoritarian state not only observed but also actively participated in the development of world cinema. At the same time, it explores how cineastes invoked the idea of art cinema as both aesthetic ideal and political instrument, deploying it to articulate modernity and critique authoritarian governance.
For more information, please see: https://taiwancenter.
Meagan Finlay awarded Interdisciplinary Humanities Center’s dissertation fellowship
Meagan Finlay, a 5th year PhD candidate studying under Professor Katherine Saltzman-Li, has been awarded the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center‘s Dissertation Fellowship for the 2025-2026 cycle. Meagan’s dissertation, “From Early Modern Kabuki Stages to Modern Screens: Production Practice Legacies and the Crafting of National Identity in Japanese Television Period Dramas”, explores the development of the Japanese period drama genre on TV and the ways in which it has carried over certain characteristics and practices from early modern kabuki. In her work, Meagan is heavily engaged with interdisciplinary methods including archival research, interviews, and observation techniques, and draws upon frameworks from Theatre Studies, Media Industry Studies, and Performance Studies. She is looking forward to becoming an IHC Fellow in the fall!
Wandi Wang defends dissertation, accepts professorship at Lehigh University
We are delighted to announce that EALCS PhD candidate Wandi Wang successfully defended her dissertation, “Taste and Gastropoetics in Traditional China, Ninth to Seventeenth Centuries CE,” on May 30, 2025. She has also accepted an offer to take up a position as Assistant Professor of Chinese in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at Lehigh University.
Congratulations, Professor Wang!
