Rebecca Nedostup talk, “War Being” in Mid-Twentieth Century China and Taiwan

Need to watch this video sometime.

I don't know if it's my computer or their set-up, but the audio is terrible.

[Update 10/31/24: Uh oh...]

'Tis the season (evidently) to buy books, even if I don't have time to read them

Just picked up (well, was sent) a new book from the University of Washington Press on the CIA and the Asia Foundation, a Cold War-era nonprofit/CIA front (that is now evidently not funded by the CIA, I guess). The book is Cold War Deceptions: The Asia Foundation and the CIA, by David H. Price. 

One thing I'll be reading this book for is how it extends or differs from Emma North-Best's long article on the CIA and the Asia Foundation on the MuckRock website. I remember reading that article a few years ago after I came across a 1951 letter from Philip Horton, assistant editor of The Reporter, to Allen Dulles, who was "Deputy Director for Plans" at the CIA at the time (if Wikipedia is correct). 

In the letter, Horton quotes a letter he had received from Kerr (who was at the Hoover Library at the time), in which Kerr criticized the Committee for a Free Asia (the precursor to the Asia Foundation). Kerr reported on a visit to Hoover by CFA president George H. Greene, Jr.* (not sure what his first name was). Kerr continued, 

Either the management is extraordinarily naive, or they assume us to be so. The line will be almost unmodified extension of the Voice of America or U.S.I.S. propaganda. "Tell the Asians how wonderful life is in America, how good our institutions are, and how very very wicked and dangerous the Communists are." There is heavy emphasis on the latter approach, with  little ready response to our questions concerning positive content. It was freely admitted that China is the primary concern. Chiang is to be neither praised nor condemned. "Counterpart Committees" will be set up overseas, operating under guarantees that the local government will not influence nor affect the content of propaganda. It was asserted that such a condition was expected to obtain in Formosa, which is to be a principal base of operations. 

It has been pointed out to the representatives of the Committee that (1) most Asians are tired of hearing how good we are, and the history of our representative institutions has little bearing on their problems, for the conditions surrounding their evolution cannot be duplicated in Asia; (2) most non-Chinese Asians fear a strong China, whatever its political orientation, and will hardly respond with enthusiasm to a rally in support of "anti-Communist government" for China, especially if it means support for the Nationalists; (3) Formosa cited as an example of "Free Asia" would be damaging nonsense. 

Those of us who talked with Greene have a troubled sense that the Administration may have decided to switch to all-out support for the Nationalists, hopefully trusting that Chiang may be thrust aside, and that the Committee not only has the State Department's blessing in this attempt to sweeten the picture, but is most actively setting it up. Each of us asks the other if at any point the [China] Lobby may be putting up funds. Odd to conceive, but not impossible in Washington. 

Actually, if the thing were worked out on a realistic appraisal of the American position in Asian eyes, it could do an enormously important job, unhampered by red tape.

Wonder if this letter helped get Kerr in any trouble with the government... 

*All you had to do was look in the index of the book you just bought, Jon... 🙄

Another new (new new new!) book in the former native speaker's library

I just got my copy of Kim Liao's Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence, which came into print (or "dropped," as the youngsters say) a few days ago. I read a little of it on the Amazon website (as much as I could) while I waited for the hardback copy, and I can't wait to read it. I'm going to put it next on my list after finishing Anru Lee's Haunted Modernities. (Interestingly, Lee has a blurb on the back of Liao's book.) 

I'm especially interested in seeing how Kim Liao treats the relationship between Thomas Liao and his family and George H. Kerr. I realize that, as K. Liao says, this is a work of creative nonfiction, so some of the conversations between the characters are reimagined, but I want to see how her perspective on Kerr compares to my own perspective.

Kim Liao is coming to Northeastern in October, so I guess I'd better get going on reading her book!

Update on new (academic) year's resolutions

I'm happy to announce that I've chosen the first book that I'll be reading on the train to school, starting on Tuesday (I'm sure all of my reader was dying to know): Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory, and Placemaking in Postindustrial Taiwan, by Anru Lee. 

I mentioned back in May that I had started to read the book shortly after I received it, but then, between teaching two summer courses and getting a book review and some other writing projects done during the summer, plus preparing for my honors course, I just didn't have time to get back to it. I really have enjoyed it so far, though, and I'm looking forward to getting back to it. Maybe I'll write a few notes about it once I finish. 

"Rhetorics in Contact" and August mushroom hunts

We're just a few days away from the beginning of the semester, and I've been feverishly working at getting my new "Rhetorics in Contact" course together. Right now it's a pretty small group of students (it's a freshman-level course in the Honors Program), but a few more people might trickle in before classes start next Wednesday, I hope.

My course description asks, 

What happens when people try to communicate persuasively with each other across cultural boundaries? How do participants’ histories, traditions, and communication patterns shape cross-cultural encounters, and how do those encounters shape future communication within and across cultures? 

In this course, we’ll be looking at different examples of how rhetorical traditions or legacies affect communication across cultural boundaries and how cross-cultural encounters are represented differently by the participants. Through the course readings, we’ll be developing a specialized vocabulary for talking about intercultural rhetoric and thinking about methods for studying it. We’ll go on to apply some of these methods to documents in the Special Collections of the Northeastern Archives, analyzing the discourses of social organizations and movements in Boston, such as the Chinese Progressive Association and the movement to desegregate Boston’s public schools. We’ll also reflect on how rhetoric across cultures affects (or should affect) advocacy in the complex global and local contexts that we currently face.

Because we're going to be working with the archives a lot, I'm not having us read a lot of different articles. Our reading list for the semester is as follows (links to relevant blog posts):

• Pratt, Mary Louise. "Arts of the Contact Zone." Profession, 1991, pp. 33-40. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25595469. (Although this isn't technically a rhetoric article, many of the concepts that Pratt discusses--like contact zones, autoethnography, transculturation, etc.--are very relevant to intercultural rhetorical studies.)
• Garrett, Mary, and Xiaosui Xiao. "The Rhetorical Situation Revisited." Rhetoric Society Quarterly,  vol. 23, no. 2, 1993, pp. 30–40. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3885923. (See my discussion of the article in this post.)
• Gaillet, Lynée Lewis. "Archival Survival: Navigating Historical Research." Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition, edited by Alexis E. Ramsey, et al., Southern Illinois University Press, 2010, pp. 28-39. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/book/4176. (Although this chapter is more aimed at graduate students and PhD-level scholars in rhetoric and composition, I think much of the discussion can be useful for undergraduate honors students, as well. For instance, when Gaillet discusses grant applications, I ask students (in Perusall) to consider what kinds of undergraduate research grants are offered at Northeastern. I think this could be useful to them in their future work.)
• Shimabukuro, Mira. Relocating Authority: Japanese Americans Writing to Redress Mass Incarceration, University Press of Colorado, 2015. (This will be interesting because I have to admit, rereading the book to annotate it on Perusall, it's pretty challenging in places. But see my discussion of the book here for my reasons for using this fascinating study.)

Other than these readings, students will be focusing a lot on exploring NU's Special Collections and settling on a collection or collections to focus on. One thing I'm trying to do with this assignment is stretch their ideas of what academic research is. Gaillet quotes the late compositionist Robert Connors as saying, "[A]rchival reading is ... a kind of directed ramble, something like an August mushroom hunt" (qtd. in Gaillet 38). Although the topics we'll be covering (and uncovering) in the course are serious (sometimes deadly serious), I also want students to experience archival research as a joyful (but sometimes depressing!) and exciting (but sometimes tedious!) process.

New year's resolutions for the 2024-2025 academic year

I haven't done this for a few years (I think the last time was 2021), but it's not necessarily a bad idea to write down a few things I'm going to try to do this year (or at least this semester). 

One is to try to get up earlier in the morning. I can use the time to do a little writing and get my Duolingo done. I used to do the Duolingo on the train into school, but this semester, I want to use my commute time to read. As my reader(s) know, I've got a stack of books that I should get started on!

Another thing I need to do is make time for writing. I have to do revisions on a paper that has been accepted (my first journal article about GHK!), and then I need to get to work on a collaboratively written biography of Kerr. I also have a rhetoric paper to work on that I have been ignoring for months.

I guess that's a good start--as I've said in the past, when it comes to resolutions, less is more!

Review of A World of Turmoil published

My review of Stephen J. Hartnett's book, A World of Turmoil: The United States, China, and Taiwan in the Long Cold War, is out in the latest issue of Rhetoric & Public Affairs. (Although the issue is dated Fall, 2023, it was published almost a year later!)

While I had a few problems with Hartnett's conclusions and recommendations, I found the book to be a valuable overview of the roles of communication and rhetoric in the history of US-China-Taiwan relations from a Taiwan-sympathetic rhetoric scholar.

Another new book in the former native speaker's library

Christina Yi, Andre Haag, and Catherine Ryu, eds. Passing, Posing, Persuasion: Cultural Production and Coloniality in Japan's East Asian Empire, University of Hawai'i Press, 2023.

This book showed up out of the middle of nowhere. I saw that there was an interview with the editors on the New Books Network, but before listening to the interview, I ordered the book. (To be honest, I still haven't listened to the interview. But I'll get around to it sooner or later!)

In my somewhat foggy state of mind, I think I was attracted to the word "persuasion" in the title and the term "pan-Asian rhetoric" in the book's summary. Paging through the book, I was surprised to see a chapter on Li Xianglan (李香蘭), who is also known as Yamaguchi Yoshiko (山口 淑子) or Shirley Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi was someone I had forgotten that I had heard of before--the other day I stumbled onto her movie, China Nights (「支那の夜」), also known as Shanghai Nights (「上海之夜」) on YouTube. I ended up watching the whole movie even though it was 98% Japanese with no subtitles. (Needless to say, I didn't get a lot out of the dialogue.) The Wikipedia article about Li Xianglan (zh) reminded me that she had also played an Indigenous girl in a movie made in Taiwan called Sayon's Bell (「サヨンの鐘」). A 2011 post by Darryl Sterk from the anthropological blog Savage Minds introduces a recent "anti-aboriginal romance film" named Finding Sayun (【不一樣的月光：尋找沙韻】) that critiques the representation of Indigenous people in the original film.* 

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading that chapter to find out more about Yamaguchi and Sayon's Bell, which I've also found a copy of on YouTube: 

I also found this 10-minute preview of Finding Sayun: 

* I think my title punctuation is a mess in this paragraph--apologies!

Aging

I've been hearing a lot lately from friends and relatives about various age-related or partially age-related health problems they're encountering. And then I share my own health problems back! I guess I'm at that stage of life when this is par for the course. Combined with that are the deaths of famous people from my childhood or youth, like Richard Simmons, Bob Newhart, Dr. Ruth, etc. And then President Biden steps away from the presidential campaign after lots of loud questions about his ability to govern at his age. (I'm not going to go into political commentary here.) 

Not sure what point I'm trying to make here, if any. Just that this is on my mind these days.

Two new books in the former native speaker's library

Got back from a short trip to find these two books that I ordered from 博客來 books:

• 移工築起的地下社會：跨國勞動在臺灣 (Underground Lives: Stories Untold for Migrant Workers in Taiwan), by 簡永達 (2023)
  
  
• 冷戰下的「臺灣研究」：北美人類學家訪問紀錄 (Studying Taiwan Before Taiwan Studies: American Anthropologists in Cold War Taiwan), edited by Derek Sheridan, Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, and Tseng Wen-liang (2024)

The latter is in both English and Chinese, so I'll probably be reading that first. But before that, I have a lot of work to catch up on...

【台灣演義】大學史 （History of Universities in Taiwan)

This was produced in 2020, but I didn't see it back then. It's pretty interesting. I learned a bit more about higher education during the Japanese colonial period and the martial law period.

I don't agree with some of the information in the video, though. They said that Soochow University was the first private university in Taiwan, but according to Wikipedia, it wasn't actually fully certified as a university until 1971. Classes started at Tunghai University in 1955, though for some reason, Tunghai isn't mentioned in this video. 

Missing the NATSA conference

This week I was supposed to be attending (and presenting at!) the 2024 North American Taiwan Studies Association conference in NYC, but I bowed out in May due to too many other commitments. Turned out that it's lucky I did because last week I had a nasty encounter with some poison ivy that is currently making my life miserable. But I felt a bit bad when I read through the conference handbook and saw how interesting it was going to be. It looks like one of those very rare conferences (in my experience) where I would like to attend almost every session! Ah well...

Six new books in the former native speaker's library

I have some money left over from my professional development fund for this fiscal year, so I bought a few more books that I thought might be helpful to my research.* Here they are:

• Haunted Modernities: Gender, Memory, and Placemaking in Postindustrial Taiwan, by Anru Lee (2023)
  I read the introduction and part of the first chapter, and I'm already hooked! I just finished Niki Alsford's Taiwan Lives, and I think this will be the next book in my collection that I read.  
  
  
• Making Punches Count: The Individual Logic of Legislative Brawls, by Nathan F. Batto and Emily Beaulieu (2024)
  This seems particularly timely, considering the fights that went on in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan recently.
  
  
• Rhet Ops: Rhetoric and Information Warfare, edited by Jim Ridolfo and William Hart-Davidson (2019)
  After Hart-Davidson's recent death, I read an obituary that mentioned this book. It looked interesting.
  
  
• Guiguzi, China's First Treatise on Rhetoric: A Critical Translation and Commentary, trans. Hui Wu (2016)
  I've already read C. Jan Swearingen's "wide-ranging" chapter from the book, but I think I should read the whole translation.
  
  
• Rebel Island: The Incredible History of Taiwan, by Jonathan Clements (2024)
  This looks like a good readable book about Taiwan, possibly useful in an introductory course.
  
  
• Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan, ed. Gunter Schubert (2016)
  One of these days, I'd like to get access to the Encyclopedia of Taiwan Studies Online, but this also looks like a useful reference.

Buying all these books has me wondering, though, what I'll do with them down the line. I've been following Kurt Bell on Twitter recently; he and his wife are retiring and moving to Japan. They decided that they could only take a total of 6 boxes of belongings with them, and this has me thinking about what I'll do with all my books if I get to that point in life. Maybe I can eventually donate these books to a library or organization (or person?) interested in Taiwan. Anyway, I think I have a few years before I get to that point. 

*Or something like that.

George Kerr, Formosa Betrayed, and the "America Skepticism Theory"

I watched a video of last August's Global Taiwan Institute panel discussion, "'America Skepticism Theory': Anti-American Propaganda and Its Impacts on Taiwan's Information Environment." 

The first speaker, GTI Deputy Director John Dotson, traced the theory back to 1979 when the US changed recognition from the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People's Republic of China. While he doesn't say this is the origin of the theory, he does suggest that the theory has its origins partly in Taiwan's own feelings of being betrayed by the U.S. His main focus, though, is on how the CCP is using and amplifying this theory to drive a wedge between Taiwan and the United States. IORG Co-Director Chihhao Yu also spends a lot of time on PRC propaganda in relation to US skepticism, but he also suggests that the Taiwanese abandonment narrative has its roots in Taiwan's history as a colony, going as far back as 400 years ago. 

One thing that I haven't heard so far is the possible connection between skepticism about America's actions/stance toward Taiwan and what George H. Kerr argued was the US "betrayal" of Taiwanese during the early postwar years. Kerr's argument in Formosa Betrayed is not just that the Kuomintang takeover of Taiwan was a betrayal of the hopes of the Taiwanese people for a just and equitable post-war society as they became part of the Chinese nation; it was also that the United States betrayed Taiwan by allowing the KMT to continue to rule Taiwan despite its corruption, incompetence, and authoritarian rule during the White Terror period. Kerr argues that the US took a hands-off position toward what was happening in Taiwan; as he relates, after he met with the director of Office of Far Eastern Affairs in March, 1947, the latter showed him the door "with remarks to the effect that no one in the United Nations and certainly no one in Washington would ever be interested in Formosa." 

Kerr watched as the US government continued to support Taiwan's KMT rulers ... until it didn't. When Nixon and Kissinger visited China, Kerr told Richard Koo that he thought Chiang Ching-kuo would use the opportunity to sell out Taiwan and that "Nixon will welcome any arrangement Chiang Ching-kuo will make -- or probably has made -- to hand Formosa over to Peking without a public international intervention or conflict of any sort. ... The interests of the Formosans are of no importance to him [Nixon] if they stand in the way of his ambition" (3 Aug. 1971). Later he described US/China interactions to Mark Mancall as the US presidents "go[ing] hat in hand to 'pay tribute'" (9 Feb. 1975). 

And I have quoted many times Chen Rongcheng's afterword (1973)/preface (1991) to the Chinese translation of Formosa Betrayed, where he wrote, ｢人不先自救，誰會救我？｣(“If we do not first help ourselves, who will save us?”) To Chen, it seemed that one of the messages of Formosa Betrayed was not to trust the US too much. 

This is not to deny anything that the panelists had to say. It's interesting, though, to speculate on whether the "America Skepticism Theory" might have some of its roots among people who themselves were advocating for Taiwan independence, and who feared being betrayed once again if they depended too much on the US. And that included Kerr himself, who increasingly despaired of the chances that his country would do the "right" thing for Taiwan.

Here's the video of the panel discussion:

台灣演義：Taiwan: An Undetermined Status?

This is another episode of 台灣演義 that has English subtitles. It goes through the history of Taiwan and its changing status under different colonial regimes, up through postwar Taiwan. A nice summary of the reasons Taiwan is in such a conflicted state. (Hmmm... that would make a nice title: Conflicted State...)

Three new books in the former native speaker's library

I wasn't sure I would be getting these because when I ordered them during the Cornell University Press sale, I never got an email confirmation. But they came today!

• Endless War: Fiction & Essays by Wang Wen-hsing (eds. Shu-ning Sciban and Fred Edwards) (2011)
  
  
• Imperial Gateway: Colonial Taiwan and Japan's Expansion in South China and Southeast Asia, 1895-1945 by Seiji Shirane (2022); here's a video of a book talk Shirane gave at the University of Washington
  
  
• Nation-Empire: Ideology and Rural Youth Mobilization in Japan and Its Colonies by Sayaka Chatani (2018); here's a video of a related talk Chatani gave on "Ideology and Emotions: Rural Youth Mobilization in Colonial Taiwan"

台灣演義： 台灣前進

This episode of 台灣演義 introduces Lin Hsien-t'ang, Chiang Wei-shui, and other Taiwanese of the Japanese colonial era who founded the Taiwan Cultural Association (台灣文化協會). It uses old photographs as well as animation to depict the work of these early advocates of equal treatment of Taiwanese under the Japanese colonial government. It also introduces the founding of the Taiwan Minpao (臺灣民報), a newspaper published for Taiwanese. It also discusses the Erlin Incident (二林事件), a conflict between sugarcane farmers and sugar refineries, and the eventual demise of the Taiwan Cultural Association. 

A new (old) book in the former native speaker's library

I got back last Saturday from Yokohama, where I had a great experience talking to a small but very interested audience about George H. Kerr, his process(es) of writing what eventually became Formosa Betrayed, how Taiwanese students at Kansas State University used Kerr's book in their "battle of the pens" with pro-KMT students, and the translations of the book into Chinese. (Some of this is discussed in my 2014 conference paper, "Formosa Translated.") 

While I was there, I also got a chance to talk with my friends Su Yao-tsung, Hidekazu Sensui, and Yukari Yoshihara about a project we're working on related to Kerr. (More details forthcoming.) I also had a lot of conversations with Su about Kerr, the writing of Formosa Betrayed and his other works, the February 28 Incident, the Taiwan independence movement in Japan and the United States, and the Cold War context of Kerr's teaching and writing about Taiwan. 

He also suggested a topic that I might work on researching related to that last point, so I decided to look up some books written about Taiwan during the 1950s. I just got one of them in the mail, Geraldine Fitch's (infamous) Formosa Beachhead (which is also available online). 

Fitch, who died in 1976 at the age of 84, was described in the New York Times obituary as "a consultant editor to The Free China Review and other English‐language publications in Taipei, Taiwan." 

Judging from a quick skim of the book, Formosa Beachhead is less about Taiwan than it is about China and the United States' policies towards China (and Nationalist China in particular). It'll be interesting to read in more detail.

There are a couple of contemporaneous reviews of the book, including the following:

• W. Macmahon Ball, in Pacific Affairs (concludes that "[t]he book should win enthusiastic readers in some sections of the Middle West and in Formosa")
• Karl A. Wittfogel, in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (a not-surprisingly glowing review by the professional ex-Communist)

I need to go home to find George H. Kerr's review of the book, but he was not as kind as these two were.

台灣演義 episode about the World United Formosans for Independence

I came across this video in my search for more information about WUFI, the World United Formosans for Independence organization. Unlike some other 台灣演義 videos that I've posted, this one has English subtitles! Enjoy!

Preparing for a presentation in Japan

I've been invited to talk at the Center for Asian Studies at Kanagawa University in Yokohama about my research on George H. Kerr. My lecture is entitled, "Formosa's "Borrowed Voice": George H. Kerr's Struggle to Chronicle Taiwan's Postwar Trauma," playing on the title of Linda Arrigo and Lynn Miles' book, A Borrowed Voice: Taiwan Human Rights through International Networks, 1960-1980 (a book you should get if you haven't yet!). Like the "foreigners" Arrigo and Miles describe who lent their voices to speak for Taiwanese who, at the time, would be in danger if they spoke out themselves, Kerr tried to use his voice to tell Americans about what was happening in Taiwan as soon as he left the island after the February 28 Incident. But he struggled to write and publish a complete account of what happened, for reasons I'll describe in my talk.

My lecture is on April 19--if you happen to be in the Yokohama area, here's where you can get more information to register!

I'm also working on an article manuscript about this topic, which has been accepted with revisions required. (That might take a little while because I'm also speaking at the North American Taiwan Studies Association conference in June. Yikes!)