I'm still working on my paper for the North American Taiwan Studies Association conference in July. Here's the schedule for the conference--I'm part of Panel B. Here's the proposal that I submitted for my presentation:
Formosa Delayed: George H. Kerr's Struggles with Scholarship and Advocacy
An early International Journal of Taiwan Studies forum on “Linking Taiwan Studies with the World” discussed a position paper by Shu-mei Shih that argued Taiwan should be studied through “relational comparison” with other countries, notably, the US. In fact, Shih argues that “Taiwan should be included in all American studies disciplines” (215). Not all of her interlocutors agreed: Mark Harrison disagreed with Shih’s emphasis on the Taiwan-U.S. nexus but concluded that Taiwan Studies “continues to need method; but that scholarly requirement is nothing less than a representation of the creation of an identity as Taiwanese by all the people around the world who identify with Taiwan” (219). And Kuei-fen Chiu connected the history of Taiwan Studies to Taiwan’s post-martial law “nation-forming project. It sought to redefine the status of Taiwan and retell the story of the past and the future of Taiwan” (221). Both quotes suggest that the distinction between scholarship and advocacy in Taiwan Studies is blurred. Chiu makes the clearest connection between Taiwan’s political opening-up and the scholarly project of studying Taiwan as a way of helping form a distinctly Taiwanese national identity. In this paper, I will explore two threads from the above discussion—the Taiwan-U.S. nexus and the blurred distinction between scholarship and advocacy—through the writings and struggles of George H. Kerr in the early years of the Cold War. Kerr’s work at this time and his uneasy relationship with scholarly objectivity anticipate the complex relationship between scholarship and advocacy that characterize Taiwan studies as a field.
Speaking of struggles, I am struggling myself with getting from Point A to Point B in my paper. I tend to get stuck in the weeds and have to try to dig myself out of the details to make a broader point about what I'm supposed to be discussing. This will be especially important since I only have 12-14 minutes to talk this time! Guess this means taking out all the jokes about how to pronounce Kerr's last name and whether Kerr is the father of American Taiwan Studies, its godfather, or its curmudgeonly uncle... [Insert bad pun about GHK as "Kerrmudgeon..."]
