EAST 224 - Taiwan Native-Soil Literature

Semester Offered: Second Semester
Full Course
Credits: 4 credits
Attribute: 4HU, CD

“Native-soil” (xiangtu) in Chinese stands for rurality, hometown, and local culture. Since the 1920s, nativist movements in Taiwan explore, define, and debate over writings that are distinctively “Taiwanese.” In this sense, “native-soil” becomes a site of memory, transformation, atonement, and melancholia. Native-soil literature studied in this course articulates an individual’s relationship with home not only in terms of “where I am from,” “why I depart,” “how I return,” but fundamentally, “who I am.” This course explores Taiwanese literature produced in two literary debates in the 1920s and 1970s, as well as works by neo-native soils writers after the millennium.

Enrollment Limit: 25
Instructor: C. Wang