Translating Taiwanese Eco-literature: Geopolitical ecologies of language in a contested critical zone

Presenting a forthcoming co-edited volume of Taiwanese eco-literature in translation, this talk considers Taiwan's contested statehood and fecund yet fragile natural environment as geopolitical affordances that propel institutional and financial support for literary projects. Casting light on the production and circulation of multilingual texts, this auto-ethnographic examination of a transnational project affords a novel ecological view of ethnogenesis, nationalism, conflict, and cooperation in Taiwan and beyond.

Ian Rowen is Associate Professor of the Department of Taiwan Culture, Languages, and Literature at National Taiwan Normal University. He is the author of One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism (Cornell University Press, 2023), the editor of Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror (Cambria Press, 2021), and the lead translator of Tibetan Environmentalists in China: The King of Dzi (Rowman and Littlefield, 2015). His new book, A Taiwanese Eco-Literary Reader, co-edited with Ti-han Chang and Darryl Sterk, will be published by Columbia University Press in 2025.