A Brief History of

 the North America Taiwan Studies Conference (NATSC)

With Taiwan's rapid political, economic, social, and cultural transformation in recent years, Taiwan Studies has become a field that is attracting growing academic interest from both Taiwanese scholars and Western scholars.  Coupling this growing interest was a greater demand for a substantial scholarly exchange channel that could serve to facilitate the communication between Taiwanese and Western scholars so as to enrich the germinating Taiwan studies with a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective.  It was for this reason that 47 Taiwanese graduate students and scholars from 20 U.S. universities initiated the establishment of a "reparatory Council for the Holding of the First North America Taiwan Studies Conference," immediately after attending a Taiwan Studies conference held at Yale University, on April 23, 1994.

The Preparatory Council aims to promote Taiwan studies in general, to enhance interaction between the academia of Taiwan and the North America, and to facilitate communication among graduate students and scholars concerning and conducting Taiwan studies.  The primary two objectives of the Preparatory Council are the holding of an annual Taiwan Studies Conference in North America and the publishing of the research papers collected from the annual conferences.

The First and Second Annual Conferences were held at Yale University on June 2-4, 1995 and at Michigan State University on May 24-26, 1996, respectively.  The Third Annual Conference is held at University of California at Berkeley on May 29 - June 1, 1997.  A total of 48 qualified papers were presented in the first two conferences, and 45 papers are presented at Berkeley this year, with major paper topic areas covering (1) Taiwanese history and culture, (2) political and economic transformation, (3) social structure, social movements, and social policies, (4) Taiwan-China relations and China studies related to Taiwan.  Approximately two hundred people have so far participated in the first two conferences, whose fields of specialty have included history, sociology, political science, economics, law, anthropology, cultural studies, religious studies, literature, education, etc.  The Fourth NATSC is expecting to host approximately 120 participants next summer.

A content analysis of the 93 selected papers of the three years of conferences have revealed the following primary focus of contemporary academic interest in Taiwan studies.

  1. Taiwanese history: 6 articles cover Taiwan's political, social, religious, and military history, from the later years of the Ching Dynasty, the Japanese colonization, to the post-war period.
  2. ethnicity and nationalism: 16 articles focus on ethnic identity of Mainlanders, Taiwanese, and overseas Formosans; social elite, political leadership, and national identity; the 2-28 Incident, collective memory, and nation-building; social classes and ethnic conflicts; democratization, stateness, and nationalism; civic nationalism vs. ethnic nationalism and Taiwanese nationalism vs. Chinese nationalism.
  3. Taiwanese aborigines: 3 articles discuss politics of coalition and confrontation between aborigines and the Han immigrants; construction and deconstruction of aboriginal origins; Presbyterian representations of Taiwanese aboriginality.
  4. language and culture: 4 articles are related to characteristics of the Taiwanese language; language and national identity; language policy and political control; Vietnam, Korea, and Japan's experience of abolishing Hanji; indigenization of Taiwanese culture.
  5. social structure and social movements: 6 articles are related to state corporatism and labor movement; gender and labor's social history; married women's working patterns; physicians and the civil society; social classes and political liberalization; environmental movements.
  6. gender and woman studies: 5 articles discuss woman's place in politics; gender in Taiwan's industrialization; married women's working patterns; Taiwan's women writers; gender roles and housing arrangements; critique of Taiwan's feminism.
  7. political institutions and political organizations: 9 articles concentrate on electoral systems, party nomination, and local factionalism; social cleavages and party competition; political elites and democratization; economic development and regime change; constitutional design and democratic consolidation.
  8. regime, state, and development: 5 articles cover the nature of the KMT regime and the authoritarian state; applicability of the bureaucratic authoritarian model and the developmental state model; the state and the professional power of medicine; the state and central-local relations.
  9. welfare state and social policies: 6 articles focus on state transformation and the system of national health insurance policy; democratic transition and old-age welfare program; non-profit organizations and child welfare policy; historical origin and political process of welfare policies in Taiwan; national identity formation and welfare state making.
  10. economy and society: 7 articles are related to transformation of the export industry; dynamic analysis of the industrial structure; technology, social networks, and governance structures; foreign workers and labor practice in Taiwan; cultural formation of direct sales in Taiwan; women and industrial development.
  11. religion and folklore: 7 articles cover the development of Buddhism in Taiwan; Yiguan Dao and Taiwan's capitalism; and Formosan Christians and Taiwanese self-determination; religious rituals and social life; social Psychology of fortune-telling; institutionalization of the Tzu-Chi Association.
  12. education: 3 articles focus on Taiwan's elementary school textbooks; effects of goal setting on children's self-efficacy and skills; task value and self-efficacy on Taiwanese college students‘ effort and achievement.
  13. literature and cinema: 9 articles cover Yeh Shi-tao's literary discourse and Taiwanese consciousness; comparison of Wu Cho-liu and Dong Fang Pai's work; anti-Communist literature in the 1950s; history of Taiwanese literature in the 1950s; Japanese and British Motifs in Taiwanese and Quebecois Fiction; contemporary literature of the 1990s; the positioning of Taiwan in contemporary cinema; movies of Lee Ang.
  14. environmental polices and politics: 4 articles are on environmental movements and environmental protection; environmental regulation; participation of environmental interest groups; political institutions and environmental policy formation.
  15. public policies: 5 articles focus on industrial policy; intercity transportation system and Taipei Urban Commuters; national parks .
  16. Taiwan-China relations and foreign relations: 8 articles discuss Taiwan Strait crisis in the 1950s; Taiwan's defense policy and national security; Taiwan's pragmatic diplomacy and China policy; Taiwan's Name card” diplomacy at the UN; Taiwan's sovereignty in international law; economic interdependence and political confrontation between Taiwan and China.
  17. resources for Taiwan Studies: 2 articles examine the role of academic libraries in Taiwan's continued development, the need for core and comprehensive bibliographies of Taiwan Studies.
The conference is made possible under the generous sponsorship of the Taiwan Research Fund, chaired by Mr. Huang Huang-hsiung.  The Taiwan Research Fund has been particularly enthusiastic in helping the forming of the NATSC from the start and has offered a long-term committed sponsorship to the NATSC.

The current Constitution of the Preparatory Council of the Annual North America Taiwan Studies Conference was passed at the First Annual Conference on June 4, 1995 at Yale University, which specifies NATSC's organizations and functions.  So far, NATSC has
roughly 100 active members.  We keep an up-to-date homepage (http://www.natsc.org)
and can be reached through e-mail at natscbd@taiwanese.com.

According to our Constitution, a Preparatory Council for the following year's conference is to be elected at each annual conference, whose primary responsibilities include calling for papers, publishing presented articles, raising necessary funds, managing human resources, and keeping an updated database.  The President for the 1995, 1996 and 1997 conferences was Chia-lung Lin (Yale University), Jih-wen Lin (University of California at Los Angeles), and Chung-hsien Huang (University of Wisconsin at Madison), respectively, and the current President for the 1998 conference is Mei-Lin Pan (Duke University).  Currently, there are 17 members in the 1998 Preparatory Council, which include  Ph.Ds, Ph.D. candidates, and Ph.D. students.

latest edition: September 15, 1997