Participants in the Pioneering Taiwan Studies workshop held on November 14-15, 2024 at the University of Washington.

Program Highlights

New Degree Launches Taiwan Studies announced the Taiwan Track as part of the new Masters in International Studies East Asia to be offered starting in autumn 2025. The MA in East Asia includes concentrations in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan as regional options. The degree will allow students to gain a broad regional understanding of East Asia while also deep knowledge within the area of their choice. It is the first Taiwan-related graduate degree in North America.

Workshops  The “Pioneering Taiwan Studies Workshop” held onNovember 14-15, 2024 brought together early American academics of Taiwan for presentations and discussion about their collective legacy and the future of Taiwan studies. Through their efforts to examine Chinese culture and how it was shaping the modern Taiwanese society, they came to understand Taiwan’s distinctiveness. This particularity would lay the foundations for Taiwan Studies in today’s academia. Participants included many of the early generation of American scholars: Hill Gates (Stanford), Robert Weller (Boston University), Stevan Harrell (UW), Barbara B. Harrell (UW), John Shepherd (University of Virginia), David K. Jordan (UCSD) and was co-hosted by Niki Alsford (University of Central Lancashire) and James Lin (UW).  The workshop included a talk by UW faculty Jing Xu on her newly published book The Unruly Child  which revisits the research of Arthur and Margery Wolf, who advised many of the early generation of Taiwan scholars. View recorded sessions at our YouTube channel.  A second workshop “Asian Indigeneities, Resilient Sovereignty, and Multiple Agencies in Taiwan and Beyond“ held in April included paper topics on Indigenous-led efforts in language and cultural preservation; Indigenous youth agency, self-determination, and identity in Taiwan and Japan; indigenous multi-species perspectives on urbanization and infrastructure, museum engagement with Indigenous heritage and reclaiming histories to assert cultural sovereignty; settler colonialism and diasporas across Taiwan and the Pacific Northwest; and indigenous learning in resistance, community building, partnerships, and placemaking. The goal of this workshop was to reach out about issues of multiple agencies and resilient sovereignty in order to achieve indigenous solidarity with examples from contemporary Taiwan and beyond.  View recorded panels at our YouTube channel. Book Talks Thanks to a grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, the Taiwan Studies Book Talk series was robust. Our book talks this year included the following, many of which are found on our YouTube channel.  October 31  Dr. Anru Lee: Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory, and Placemaking in Postindustrial Taiwan (University of Hawaii Press, 2023). November 14 Dr. Jing Xu: “Unruly” Children: Historical Fieldnotes and Learning Morality in a Taiwan Village (Cambridge University Press, 2024).  November 21 Dr. Fang Yu Hu: Good Wife, Wise Mother: Educating Han Taiwanese Girls Under Japanese Rule (UW Press, 2024). January 30 Drs. Catherine Chou and Mark Harrison, co-authors: Revolutionary Taiwan: Making Nationhood in a Changing World Order (Cambria Press, 2024) February 6 Dr. Timothy Yang: A Medicated Empire: The Pharmaceutical Industry and Modern Japan (Cornell University Press, 2021). March 6 Dr. Honghong Tinn: Island Tinkerers: Emulation, Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan’s Computing Industry (MIT Press, 2025). May 15 Dr. James Lin: In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan (University of California Press 2025).

Arts & Culture Program

During the 2024–2025 academic year, the UW Taiwan Studies Arts & Culture Program presented a dynamic slate of public programs exploring Taiwan’s history, identity, and cultural expression. From performance, to films, to lectures, and exhibits, The Arts & Culture program, curated by Ellen Chang, Director of the Arts & Culture program, and who teaches undergraduate coursework related to Taiwanese culture, partnered with a variety of organizations both on and off campus to bring film, performance artists, lecturerers, and exhibits to the community. Bringing such a wide range of programming to the UW and greater Seattle community has deepened public understanding of Taiwan’s cultural complexity and fostered vital cross-cultural dialogue among academic, diasporic, and public audiences. READ MORE.

Faculty and Scholar Highlights

Assistant Professor James Lin’s book In the Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan was published open access by University of California Press in 2025. This book elucidates the history and impact of the “Taiwan model” of agrarian development by incorporating how Taiwanese experts took the country’s agrarian success and exported it throughout rural communities across Africa and Southeast Asia. Driven by the global Cold War and challenges to the Republic of China’s legitimacy, Taiwanese agricultural technicians and scientists shared their practices, which they claimed were better suited for poor, tropical societies in the developing world. These development missions, James Lin argues, were projected in Taiwan as proof of the ruling government’s modernity and technical prowess and were crucial to how the state sought to hold onto its contested position in the international system and its rule by martial law at home.

In November 2024, the Office of Global Affairs celebrated Dr. Yen-Chu Weng in the Global Visionaries series. The Global Visionaries series highlights the UW’s global impact by featuring innovative, globally-engaged faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Dr. Yen-Chu Weng, Lecturer, Program on the Environment, describes her experience advancing global learning opportunities between the United States and East Asia – and reducing barriers to participation – for students at the University of Washington. Read the full article.

Yi-tze Lee is currently a visiting Fulbright scholar at the University of Washington affiliated with the Taiwan Studies Program. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan, where he served as the departmental chair (2021-2024). He has been doing fieldwork among the indigenous peoples in Taiwan, especially with the Amis people. His research interests cover indigenous revitalization and resilience, including agricultural transition, food sovereignty, ritual performance, infrastructure/landscape building, and multi-species networking. His research talk given on May 8, 2025 was livestreamed and recorded.

Student Highlights

Each year, the Husky 100 recognizes 100 undergraduate, graduate and professional students from the UW Bothell, Seattle, and Tacoma campuses in all areas of study who are making the most of their time at the University of Washington. Recognized in the 2025 100 is Tin Pak, B.A. – International Studies, and B.A. – Political Science and student assistant to the Taiwan Studies Program (on leave this quarter while in Taiwan). Tin also is the 2024-25 awardee of the Jackson School’s David Hughes Endowed Scholarship.