Abstract: Challenging the view of Taiwan as a product of transience and displacement, it highlights Taiwan’s subjectivity, viewing the island as a site of a global development that epitomizes both resistance and negotiation in the process of cultural flows.
The fourteen contributions by an international team of scholars investigate the multi-layered and multidirectional interplays between the island and the outside world, exploring the impact of complex cultural encounters on the construction, writing and rewriting of Taiwan in a global context. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the topics covered range from Taiwanese literature, cinema, food culture and tourism to cultural geography, colonial history, and folk religion, with comparisons made with Japan, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the West.