Summer plans

The spring semester is over here--and just in time, as a hay fever-driven lethargy has overtaken me, making it hard for me to concentrate on whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing right now. I have two online courses to run in May-June ("Summer A," which used to be known as "Summer 1"), though, so I need to get ready for them. I've got one prepared, but I need to go through the other one and update it, and then make a few screencasts before classes start May 6. (I hope I can talk without sounding like I have a stuffed-up nose.)

After the Summer A classes are ready, I need to get back to work on preparing for a new course I'll be teaching in the fall: Introduction to Rhetoric. The regular professor is going to be on leave, so I'm taking over. While there are no set-in-stone content requirements, the course description reads as follows:

Introduces major concepts, traditions, and issues in rhetorical studies. Explores topics such as the range of ways that people persuade others to change their minds or take action; the relationship among language, truth, knowledge, and power; the role of language in shaping identity, communities, and cultures; and the use of rhetoric for activism and advocacy. Focuses on rhetoricians and rhetorics from diverse traditions, emphasizing contemporary and interdisciplinary approaches to investigating a wide range of rhetorical artifacts.

The regular professor has given me access to her materials, which are, of course, excellent, reflecting her years of teaching the course. I think I need, though, to develop the course in a way that fits my own expertise and teaching style. I'm working on that now, and I hope to talk to her soon to see what she thinks of my ideas. She might be able to help me avoid some possible wrong turns I'd take! More on all this in future posts, perhaps.

In addition to the course development, I'll be going to Taiwan this summer for a conference at Academia Sinica in August. I'll be part of a roundtable on "Oberlin Shansi in China and Taiwan: The Transformation of a Transnational Educational Mission." I'm supposed to talk about how martial law-era Taiwan and Tunghai University were depicted in the campus letters reps in Taiwan sent back to the Oberlin community. It'll be interesting to revisit that period of my academic life when all I seemed to think about was that hardy band of young Oberlin grads who were teaching English in Taiwan and teaching Oberlin about Taiwan. 

I might also try to do some research while I'm in Taiwan, but right now I'm not sure what I want to do research about. I was initially interested in the story of Ts'ai T'ieh-cheng (蔡鐵城), whom I first read about when working on a presentation about the White Terror for students who are going on a study-abroad trip to Taiwan this May. Ts'ai, who was born in Ta-chia (大甲) in 1923, reported for the Ho-ping Jih-pao (和平日報) in central Taiwan before becoming involved with Hsieh Hsueh-hung's (謝雪紅) "27 Brigade" (二七部隊) after the February 28 Incident. In 1953 he was executed. His story (here it is in Chinese, an excerpt from a book entitled 《二二八記者劫》) was very moving, particularly the part where he wrote a note to his younger sister the night before he died. 

A note that Ts'ai wrote to his sister the night before his execution: “Dear little sister: Do you know? On the night before I leave this world, you are my only companion. I took out your photograph and looked at it again and again. Ah, I hope—" And then the ink is smeared, perhaps by tears. Some believe the missing words were "that you grow up smart and beautiful."

I thought about doing more research on his life and his reporting. The National Central Library appears to have microfilm of the Ho-ping Jih-pao, so I might take a look there if I get a chance. I'm still working out what my whole purpose would be for doing this research, though. Maybe I won't know until I see the newspaper microfilm. That's how it goes sometimes, right?

Taiwan Studies+ 2.0 symposium reflection

Yesterday, I attended the "Taiwan Studies+ 2.0" international symposium at Harvard. I found all of the presentations really fascinating, even (especially?) when I didn't know anything about the topics. There were presentations about video games, noise pollution, Japanese-era mountaineering, representations of Indigenous people in ecological literature, capitalism, the "semiconductor shield," diasporic Taiwanese activism, ROC/Taiwan relations, and transitional justice, among other topics. 

Sitting there, I realized how much about Taiwan and Taiwan Studies I don't know. But it was an inspiring feeling rather than a depressing one. It reminded me that my own perspective on Taiwan--one that I've acquired through drilling down on a very niche topic (the life and writings of George H. Kerr)--is in need of these encounters with other perspectives so that I'm not stuck in my GHK bubble. Part of that is becoming more aware of how Taiwan is represented in various academic disciplines, not just history. 

One of the questions that came up in the final discussion was about the current status of Taiwan Studies. There was the positive feeling among participants that they don't have to explain Taiwan as much in their articles as they used to (what I've called the "shaped roughly like a tobacco leaf" approach to writing about Taiwan). At the same time, people expressed concern about how to represent Taiwan in relation to China and to global events, and one participant spoke eloquently of the urgency of representing Taiwan during a period of wars and the potential for war in the Taiwan Strait. I'm reminded of a rhetoric scholar from Hong Kong who wrote on social media a while back that a paper they had written about Hong Kong was rejected with the response that Hong Kong was a dead subject. Hopefully, this won't happen to Taiwan or to the people who study Taiwan.

GHK bio updates

A couple of updates about the George Kerr biography:

• We have a publisher! (I'm not going to reveal the details yet, though. I'm not sure we have signed a contract yet.)
• The MS went out yesterday to be reviewed. Evidently, though, we have more time to work on it as we wait for the reviewers' comments. (I have some hopes about some of the things I'd like the reviewers to say, but I won't go into that here.) 
• As I might have mentioned, this edition of the biography will be in Chinese. I'm hoping, though, that we will be allowed to have an English version done at some point. This is something we'll have to work out with the publishers, I suppose. If you have any suggestions for an English-language publisher, let me know!

OK, now that it's off to the reviewers, I should use the waiting time to get some grading done...

Brief interview for RTI's "Taiwan vs. the World" posted

Julien Oeuillet, who moderates the "Taiwan vs. the World" program on Radio Taiwan International, interviewed me for an episode about books to read to understand Taiwan. I'm talking, of course, about George H. Kerr's Formosa Betrayed. My interview isn't until 35 and a half minutes in, but I also enjoyed the interview with Jason Patterson and Matthew Ryan on marketing in Taiwan. It was quite informative!

Formosa Files interview about George Kerr and Formosa Betrayed posted!

I'm so far behind in posting this that the Formosa Files folks have already posted two new podcasts since my interview! But in case you didn't catch it, I was interviewed by John Ross about Kerr and Formosa Betrayed. The podcast (greatly edited but still a bit long at close to an hour) is here. While you're at it, check out their other episodes--they're always fun and interesting to listen to!

Things I'm not regretting

Spring break is almost over for me, and if I had one, my to-do list would still be full.

• I didn't clean my study.
• I didn't finish that humanities fellowship application.
• I didn't do our taxes.
• I didn't go to a Fairbank Center presentation about Taiwan's legal status.

I did finish grading (which is why I didn't go to the presentation). And I did do a little research for something we needed to add to a one of the Kerr biography chapters. In any case, though, I'm not going to regret not getting much done during my spring break. I got some rest, which is important. Next week it's back to work, and I think I'll be grateful for having gotten that rest.

[Update, 3/7/26: I did our taxes last night. It took only an hour and a half!]

Things I'm (re)learning

I'm working on an application for a Humanities Center fellowship right now--here's their blurb about it:

2026-2027 Theme: Revolutions

We invite applications for our second annual Global Fellowship Program focused on the theme of revolutions. A revolution signals a foundational shift in action and thought. Whether they take the form of political uprisings, social movements, or collective struggles, revolutions transform our understanding of the world and our place in it by remaking our epistemologies and modes of relating. The word “revolution” also carries a physical and astronomical meaning: a full turn, a return, or a cyclical rotation. A revolution can signal either a dramatic break with the past or the completion of a cycle. Hence revolutions can serve as an entry point to discussions about the nature of change, progress, disruption, and time in our societies. We welcome proposals for Humanities research projects that engage the theme of revolutions, broadly conceived.

Without going into detail about what I'm proposing (or trying to propose), I've come to some realizations about this sort of thing that I'm thinking of sharing with the students in my advanced writing class, who are also working on developing topics, research questions, etc. for their projects. As I wrote in my offline journal (the aforementioned "Thoughts and Frustrations," aka "A Record of My Decline") while I was trying to figure out my "aims" for the project, 

I think here I’m getting at aims (and maybe method, to some extent). What is my purpose? What kinds of questions am I trying to answer? It seems that part of the issue here is that I’m trying to come up with some sort of answer here already. A thesis rather than a research question. This is what I was talking to students about the other day. If this is a research project, I shouldn’t have an answer yet, should I?

It struck me that while I needed to focus on developing a research question, there is still a sneaky sort of thesis involved in that--the question of the significance of that research question. The "so what?" of it. As I put it later, "It’s harder sometimes to come up with a good question than it is to come up with a thesis."

Anyway, back to plugging along at this. I need to get it done by March 1(!), so I'm going to have to settle on something pretty soon. 

Things I'm avoiding

Besides grading, I'm avoiding three things that all would be good for me. One is doing some stretching (or even physical therapy) for my back, which got worse after the last big epic snow shoveling session. Folks have been suggesting PT, but that would involve figuring out how to get that covered by insurance, and I don't have the bandwidth for that right now.

The second thing is cleaning my study. I might work on this during my spring break (though I'll be doing something else then that I've been putting off--taxes). Cleaning up this room might make it less depressing to sit in here to work. Might make it easier to find things, too.

Speaking of finding things, the other thing I'm putting off cleaning up is my LibraryThing account. Does anyone still use LibraryThing? I used to faithfully record all my book purchases in it, and I even recorded which boxes I had put which books in when we moved from Taiwan. But like my study, my LibraryThing is a mess. It looks like I haven't added anything to it in over 10 years. The reason I mention it is that I'm having trouble finding some of my books (or finding out if I even own particular books that I thought I owned). Something else to clean up one of these days?

I'm mainly writing this because I see I only have one post for February. Now I have two.

New title for my offline journal?

It occurred to me this morning to change the name of my offline journal, which I've been keeping for the better part of 20 years. Right now it's called "Thoughts and Frustrations," which comes from the original purpose of the journal, which was to be a place where I would brainstorm, draft, and reflect on the process of my dissertation. Looking through some earlier journals this morning (as I often do on the first of the month), I have to admit I was impressed by my ability to focus so well on my academic work. 

After I finished the dissertation and moved to the US in 2011, the journal's purpose has broadened and my "thoughts and frustrations" have extended beyond academic work to life in general. I also suspect that it reflects less focused thinking more generally. I'm reminded of a study from a decade or so ago that used text mining to look at the novels of Agatha Christie to determine whether they indicated the onset of Alzheimer's. I had the thought this morning to run my 20 years' worth of journals through AI to see what conclusions it might come to regarding my cognitive state, but I have no desire to have all my private thoughts subjected to whatever Claude might want to do with them.

At any rate, based on those reflections, I am toying with the idea of renaming my offline journal "A Record of My Decline." Catchy, isn't it?

New book in the former native speaker's library

The Island: A Personal Account of Taiwan’s Extraordinary Transformation, by Mark O’Neill (Earnshaw Books, 2023).

OK, I said this wouldn't happen, but I heard about this book on the Formosa Files podcast where they interviewed the author. I'm looking forward to reading it, but right now I have to get back to grading!

Here's a review of the book from the Asian Review of Books.

The dangers of long, deep dives into the correspondence of a grumpy former diplomat

I wonder if anyone else has experienced this--you spend hours, days, weeks, months... reading the archived correspondence of your biographical subject as he goes through his life, inevitably aging and perhaps losing some of his inhibitions (if he ever had any) in the way he expresses himself. 

Then you turn to write some emails and find, to your horror (or perhaps not really to your horror!), that you're writing in something very closely approximating his voice. Somehow you've absorbed his jaded, cantankerous style of writing (which might not be that far from how you're feeling anyway--after all, it's pretty easy to feel jaded and cantankerous these days, amirite?), and before you know it, you've hit the "Send" button, and a message goes out that makes you sound like someone who is tired of life and mad at the world. 

Is Kerr doing that to me or are his letters just bringing to the surface what's already there?

2526A Makiki Heights Drive

This was George H. Kerr's address for about 26 years of his life in Hawaii. Out of curiosity, I googled it and was happy to find photographs of what used to be his apartment on the second floor of what's described elsewhere as an "'Old Hawaii' style home in a 'Tree Top' setting with private deck and ocean/Honolulu views." (My wife and I drove by the house years ago on a trip to Hawaii, but I never thought I'd get a look inside!) In case the websites or photos disappear, I'm going to copy them here, knowing that there's a chance that June Maeda Realty will ask me to take them down. (On the other hand, perhaps I'm helping them advertise this apartment!)

The house was built in 1934. I see from the description that the carpeting is new, but I imagine that the stove and the bathtub might have been there when Kerr lived there. It doesn't appear that this apartment has air conditioning, but perhaps the climate on Makiki Heights Drive is/was cool enough that a combination of fans and the large windows would suffice. 

In a letter from 1984, Kerr noted “the imminent loss of my apartment here which I have occupied for twenty-five years.” He had to leave after his landlord died. He moved to an apartment in Wilder House at 1114 Wilder Avenue, Honolulu, which I imagine was a challenging task, considering he was in his seventies at the time.

[Update, 8:12 p.m.] I was right about the last sentence. I just read that shortly after moving to his new apartment, he ended in the Emergency Room at the Queen's Medical Center and had to have surgery. (He doesn't say what kind of surgery.) He spent a couple of weeks in the hospital, it seems. A month later, he reported that he had lost 24 pounds "and apparently all my strength" since moving. He had to have someone help him organize his research materials because he didn't have the strength to do it himself.

First day of classes tomorrow

I'm really working up to the last minute on the GHK stuff. I just sent off some vignettes (?) about Kerr's work on a book about King Kalākaua, the publication of Licensed Revolution, and his failed attempt to write a second book about Okinawa. 

Now I need to turn my attention to teaching. I'm going back to teaching Advanced Interdisciplinary Writing this semester after a detour into teaching First-Year Writing for the first time in a couple of years. Compared to FYW, the advanced writing class is like an old friend. Tomorrow we'll just be introducing ourselves to each other, and I'll briefly introduce the course. It should be fairly typical of previous first days of class. But as I always tell my mom when I end a call with her, "We'll see what happens." Maybe something will surprise me (hopefully in a good way!).

Ha ha...

From a memo from George Kerr to the University Press of Hawaii, concerning their edits to his bibliography for Licensed Revolution.

and this...

Need some motivation

My course materials are "published" ahead of time--classes start Wednesday, although I don't need to meet with in-person students until Friday. I'm trying to spend as much time as possible before then working through some George Kerr correspondence as a contribution to a chapter on Kerr's later years. Lots of uplifting talk of his trials and tribulations with getting Licensed Revolution published; getting Asian art objects sold to keep body and soul together; dealing with aging and being robbed and becoming more and more cantankerous; trying to finish a book about Hawai'ian King Kalākaua, about whom Kerr was becoming less and less enamored the more he wrote about him (how well I know the feeling...). 

Speaking of King Kalākaua, I recently bought a copy of Tiffany Lani Ing's book, Reclaiming Kalākaua: Nineteenth-Century Perspectives on a Hawaiian Sovereign (2019), which promised a more sympathetic evaluation of the man than he has traditionally received. Kerr isn't cited in the book, but that is not surprising, considering that he never published his manuscript on Kalākaua. Ing's book relies more on Hawai'ian-language sources than many of the other books written about Kalākaua. Like the writers of these other books, Kerr did not have access to (i.e., couldn't read) the Hawai'ian language. 

For an introduction to Ing's book--by the author herself--you can watch this video (I need to watch it later because I need to get back to the Kerr correspondence now!):

Not exactly off to a good start...

So after writing about my resolution yesterday, I stayed up until after 2:00 this morning working on my course materials for the new semester. I have one course ready and two to finish. Woke up late this morning and got back to work. Took a break to shovel out the driveway with my son, who was eager to shovel snow for some reason. I think tonight, I will try to go to bed earlier. I need to get myself (and our son, who doesn't go to sleep until we do!) back to a more normal sleeping schedule. Wish me luck!