Special Session: Mimicry, Parody, Hybridity: Contemporary Taiwan Literature
and Culture

2006 MLA Convention

Philadelphia, December 27-30, 2006

Deadline Extended: March 30, 2006

This special session will examine how contemporary Taiwan literature and
culture mimic, adopt, assimilate, transform, or resist foreign influences of
Europe, US, Japan, and the emerging Korea. An island 100 miles offshore
mainland China, Taiwan has been politically and culturally marginalized. In
the process of modernization, Taiwan adopted Western and Japanese models
without much questioning. Over the past decade, "Taiwan First" has
dominated the government's educational and cultural policies. Official
ideology, however, only bespeaks Taiwan's lack of an unambiguous identity
and a cultural anchor. Many Taiwan writers, artists, cultural leaders and
educators received their training in Europe, US, or Japan. How do they
perceive and represent self and the culturally superior other? What are
their poetic or aesthetic strategies in negotiating between the local and
the global? Do the concepts of neocolonialism, self-Orientalism or
Occidentalism apply? Topics may include, but are not limited to cinema,
performance, popular culture, and art.

A collection of essay is planned for publication.

Please send abstracts and CV electronically by March 30 to blei_at_ntu.edu.tw.

Bi-qi Beatrice Lei
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
National Taiwan University
Website: http://literaria.net
E-mail: blei_at_ntu.edu.tw  

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Tue Mar 28 2006 - 09:32:15 EST