Taiwan Lecture Series - Summer Term 2025

Taiwanese Environmental Imagination in the Age of Globalization

This year’s Taiwan Lecture Series "Taiwanese Environmental Imagination in the Age of Globalization” engages with various cultural responses to Taiwanese and global transformations of environments. Against the backdrop of multiple crises in an entangled world, authors and filmmakers are striving for shifts in human-nonhuman interaction and perception, zooming in on the diversity of Taiwanese environments and social constellations and placing them in a context of global economical exchange and shifting world orders. The class comprises lectures by renowned scholars, film screenings and readings and discussions, among others with eco-writer Wu Ming-yi, as well as seminar sessions. During the latter, we engage in discussions on a broad range of textual and audiovisual material and ask for its critical potential in rethinking environments in and beyond Taiwan.

Public lectures:

• 30 April (6 p.m. CATS-Auditorium): SCREENING My Fancy High Heels 我爱高跟鞋, dir. Ho Chao-ti, 2010
• 14 May (6 p.m. CATS-Auditorium): SCREENING Short Films: Zhang Huijing 張惠菁 (author) / Zhang Wentang 鄭文堂 (dir.): Moths 蛾, 2010, and short films from the collection 10+10, 2012
• 28 May (6 p.m. CATS-Auditorium): Dr. Chang Chia-ju (Brooklyn College): Diedao: Yogācāric Contemplative Nature Writing and Reading《蝶道》: 唯識冥想自然書寫與閱讀
• 11 June (6 p.m. CATS-Auditorium): Dr. Thomas Fliß (University of Trier): Ecological Empathy: A New Perspective on Taiwanese Poetry (and Beyond)
• 8 July (11 a.m., online, please register with sara.landa@zo.uni-heidelberg.de): Reading and Discussion with Taiwanese Ecocritical Writer Wu Ming-yi and Translator Catherine Xinxin Yu