Report to the American Studies Association 2008 International Initiatives
Hsinya Huang
National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan
I would like to, first of all, express my profuse thanks to the National Science Council for its travel grant, which, alongside the subsidies from the American Studies Association, helped make my trip to the 2008 Annual Meeting in Albuquerque possible. This has been a wonderful tradition and greatly consolidated the network of connections between the US and Taiwan scholarly communities in American studies, of which I am one of the fortunate beneficiaries.
The Albuquerque meeting itself was an exhilarating and enriching experience with so many inspiring contributions and the exchange of expertise and research findings was quite unprecedented. It provided an open forum for crossing geographical, cultural and disciplinary boundaries and helping expanding my network and connection with acclaimed scholars in the field. As the Head of my Department, I think this experience is both productive and rewarding as it was for the last two years. In the last two meetings, I had a chance to speak to numerous scholars by attending international scholar luncheon, women’s committee luncheon, workshops, roundtables, and panels and through conversations in and outside the conference, about possible collaborative and exchange programs between my department and their programs. I invited Professor Philip Deloria and Joni Adamson to speak in the 2007 international symposium on Diaspora and Ethnic Studies held in my department on June 16 and 17, 2007, where Professor David Eng of University of Pennsylvania and Sheng-mei Ma of Michigan State University, Joseph Lee of New York University, Shin Yamamoto of Japan University, Kun Jong Lee of Korean University, from diverse areas of expertise in Irish American or Asian-American studies joined them to enter into a trans-pacific dialogue on American and ethnic studies. I was invited by Phil Deloria, President of the 2008 ASA, to serve on the Program Committee, and despite other very heavy institutional obligations I now face as Deputy Dean of the Colleague of Liberal Arts and Chairperson of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, I was thrilled to accept the invitation as an honor and a privilege. For, not only is my presence on the Program Committee a symbolic marker of the ASA commitment to internationalization, but I am also able to utilize my administrative capacities to further the collaboration, partnership, and exchanges between the ASA and major American Studies programs and associations in Taiwan and Asia. If I could do anything significant in this regard, I do it to repay even some of the generous and gracious offers (material, spiritual, and intellectual), which I have received
through my connection with the ASA. Phil Deloria and I, alongside some other prestigious scholars in Native American studies, also agreed to continue pursuing the possibility of collaboration in diverse domains, including publishing together some of our works in a major international American Studies journal and / or a celebrated university press. In fact, we have accepted Shirley Lim and Shelly Fishkin’s invitation to guest-edit a special issue on Native American studies for the newly launched on-line journal, Journal of Transnational American Studies. Other collaborative prospects emerged recently, including co-editing an issue of Journal of American
Studies (Cambridge UP) with Phil Deloria in 2010.
This year, I organized a panel on “Crossroads, Borderlands, Diaspora: Remapping the Terrain of Native American Studies,” chaired by Patricia Clark Smith, University of New Mexico and joined by Annette Kolodny (University of Arizona) and Margo Tamez (Washington State University), through which we had the opportunity to inform, engage, and influence international audiences about the important issues especially in Native North American studies. The panel was well received and invited considerable participation and discussion from the floor. As a pioneer scholar in both Native American and feminist studies, Annette Kolodny demonstrated great intellectual leadership and Margo Tamez fascinated the audience with her first-hand activist experience on Mexico-US border. I had a dinner meeting with Kolodny, Joni Adamson, several of my colleagues from Taiwan, and friends from Duke University; I interviewed Tamez on her poetry and activism after the panel. My PhD advisee Clara Chang spoke on the same panel with Diane Glancy, whose
Pushing the Bear, a novel on the Trail of Tears, was the pivotal center of their session.
Glancy accepted our invitation to give an interview and have part of her work translated into Chinese. Many exchanges at high intellectual levels have taken place and will take place in the next couple of years. I am amazed and appreciative of all the fascinating and intellectually exciting and challenging experiences that occur in my life through my participation in the ASA.
In addition to the 2008 Program Committee meeting and my own panel presentation, I also participated in the International Partnership Luncheon and Lunch for Women in American Studies, both of which helped increase dialogue with international and women scholars on the issues we have long concerned about. I was present as well in several panels, workshops, seminars, and roundtables on Native American studies, ethnic studies, cultural history, politics and poetics of memory, border studies, diaspora scholarship, ecocriticism, and borderland militantization, all of which were inspiring and enlightening. Phil Deloria’s presidential address opened my eyes to the innovative viewpoints on “ ‘crossroads’ issues surrounding the structures of interdisciplinarity, integrations, and dialogues with adjacent fields and
practices . . . and the nature of American studies scholarship within the contemporary academy. Deloria has accepted my invitation to visit Taiwan again from May 18 to May 28, 2009, during which time he will be meeting intellectual leaders in Taiwan, Director of American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), Minister of Cultural Affairs on Taiwan, and delivering speeches in five major universities and academic institutes here.
Besides, I was also impressed by the extraordinarily stimulating and heart-touching dialogues offered by Patricia Clark Smith and Linda Hogan in the ceremony in memory of Paula Gunn Allen, Chadwick Allen on Native issues, Lawrence Buell on environmentalism and eco-criticism, Joni Adamson on environmental justice, Hertha Wong on ethnic life writings, Beth Piote on Native American literature, and Gerald Vizenor and Robert Lee on Vizenor’s new book, etc. Chadwick Allen has accepted my invitation to teach a graduate seminar for my department in summer of 2009; Hertha Wong and I will organize a panel to be submitted to the 2009 ASA Program; other participants include Susan Castillo, Christina Matteotti, and Teresa Toulouse.
Now as a member of the international committee, I would like to think of how Taiwan can play a crucial part and contribute to the ASA international initiatives. I plan to help bring positive American values and culture to the young minds in my country. As I work at the forefront of Taiwanese higher education, I am one of the decision makers and opinion leaders, who are to shape our future educational goals and curriculum structures in the university education. I hope to do so by bringing trans-cultural messages from the Americas and integrate them in our curriculum, counteracting negative preconceptions, maintaining open dialogues, and building bridges of understanding. It is also my hope that I will continue to enhance mutual scholarly exchanges by inviting international scholars in American studies to my university on teaching or research visits. I will work with AIT to implement such new initiatives as American Studies Seminar Series by recruiting international scholars to Taiwan to speak to island-wide students and professionals to increase awareness of the U.S. issues. In the context of an increasingly transnational and transhemispheric globe, when the master narratives of time and place are shifting and we indeed face “crossroads,” the 2008 annual meeting again offered a platform for me to get in extensive contact with professionals and academic and administrative leaders in different fields of work to exchange ideas, research findings, and observations concerning important issues central to the re-construction/rewriting of identity, memory, and community in contemporary American studies.
I will specifically continue to touch on a wide range of contemporary art forms by indigenous people and seek to transnationalize Native North American Studies and
4 encourage dialogue among those dedicated to this study. Next year, bringing together scholars from the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia, I hope my panel will continue to contribute significantly to the scholarship and diverse approaches of American studies. I will also work closely with AIT to help establish new initiatives including recruiting international scholars to speak to island-wide professionals and students on a wide range of topics from identity politics to American literature and popular culture. There are to be planned seminar lecture series on transnational/ multicultural/ interdisciplinary/ border-crossing subjects. As an administrator, I am also to link our curriculum to the diverse American Studies resources, to activate our curriculum by recruiting American subject-matter experts from the international academic communities, encourage our students to engage in American studies, and to support my colleagues in their teaching and research on American Studies topics. Inspired by John Stephens, Executive Director of the ASA, I will also try to propose a project to the International Committee about the issue of reviews of American Studies programs as it applies to international programs and centers and perhaps consider adding a section to the current ASA's Guide for the Review of American Studies Programs. I see myself as both a border-crosser and bridge-builder and consider it my mission to make solid our American studies program by informing my colleagues and students of the most recent trends, issues, and concerns of American studies which I am prepared to continue to learn in the ASA annual meetings in the years to come.
Hsinya Huang
Professor and Chair, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature Deputy Dean, College of Liberal Arts
National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan hsinya@mail.nsysu.edu.tw
