Home
- Lectures
- Institute of European and American Studies
- Location
1F Conference Room, Institute of European and America Studies, Academia Sinica
- Speaker Name
Prof. Chris Fan (Associate Professor, Department of English, UC Irvine)
- State
Definitive
- Url
https://www.ea.sinica.edu.tw/Content_List_Page.aspx?pid=0&uid=237&cid=65534
2026-07-24 15:30 - 18:00
Abstract
This talk examines the linked mythologies of twoof Taiwan'ssignature global achievements: the Taiwan New Cinema (TNC) and the semiconductor industry. Drawing on celebrated TNC director Edward Yang's own biography as both an early microcomputer engineer and a founding figure of the TNC, the talk argues that these two myths expressed the same underlying national project: a defense of Taiwanese sovereignty and the strategic cultivation of a Taiwanese identity amidst geopolitical precarity. Both of these myths have been airbrushed with revisionism -- crediting the TNC's global success to auteur geniuses, and the semiconductor industry's success to visionary technocrats like Li Kwoh-ting and businessmen like Morris Chang. Rather than undermine these myths, this talk seeks to turn them inside-out: to show how each is a distinctly Taiwanese narrative about contingency and the bottom-up contributions of non-state actors.
