World Congress of Taiwan Studies

This looks pretty exciting: it’s the 1st World Congress of Taiwan Studies, which is being held April 26 to 28 at Academia Sinica. There is an impressive list of speakers and discussants in 26 sessions at which 107 papers will be presented. Around 180 local and international scholars who are leading experts in Taiwan Studies have been invited to attend, so it might be a great place to meet and network with leaders in your fields.

All the details can be found on the website:

http://wcts.sinica.edu.tw/05_03_en.php

Special thanks to Scott Simon, the chair of the Taiwan Studies program at the University of Ottawa, for passing this on. (Yes, sometimes I have to get news from across the planet to tell me what’s going on just down the street!)

Film Fest – Call for Entries

The Urban Nomad Film Festival is coming up, and they have announced their call for entries. If you have a short film that you’d like to get screened, or would like to put one together in the month or so before the deadline, this is a great film festival and one that is always a lot of fun. (They’ve screened my films in the past, so I always say nice things about them!)

Details can be found at their website:

http://urbannomaden.blogspot.com/

Not only is it fun, but it could be lucrative as well — the short film competition will award two jury prizes, with a top prize of NT$20,000 and a second prize of NT$10,000 for “Taiwanese short films”. This means films of 45 minutes or less by Taiwanese filmmakers, filmmakers who are residents of Taiwan, or films produced in Taiwan or with some strong connection to Taiwan.

So, if you have a camera and a dream…

Library holdings

If you want the NCCU library to add a book to its holdings, login to the system and file a request here:

http://rams.lib.nccu.edu.tw/recommendation/

(Warning: it’s in Chinese.)

This actually might come in handy. The last time I was in the library, I couldn’t find a single Batman comic. Not one!

 

Harvard Conference meeting on 1/19, 1pm, English Corner

Glad to know that there are so many interested in helping up with HPAIR conference!
I’ve managed to schedule a meeting for us with the HPAIR team to fill you up with details.
Please come on Thursday 1/19th at 1pm. College of Social Science North wing 12th Floor at English Corner.
The team will have a meeting with prof. Huang at 2pm, so they can show us what have they done so far and what are the plans before that meeting.

Hope to see you all there.
Any questions please call Lucie – the team leader : 0922991755
or me 0912147864

Best,
Huong

ASEAN Conference

Yilmaz passed on this info, about an international conference to be held in Chiang Mai, Thailand on 26-27 July 2012, titled “Towards an ASEAN Economic Community.” It looks good. Plus, it’s in Thailand!

Details at this link: http://www.icird.org/2012/index.html

 

Travel App

I hope nobody gets stuck in the dorms in Mucha for the Lunar New Year — that doesn’t sound like oodles of fun. So in case you do have the chance to escape, and you own one of these newfangled smart phones, you might be interested in this Taiwan travel app, “Taiwan For Culture Vultures”

http://bradttaiwan.blogspot.com/2011/12/taiwan-for-culture-vultures.html

It was written by a friend of mine down south, so forgive the blatant plug, but I hope you’ll find it useful in your exploration of our wonderful island home!

 

Harvard Volunteer Opportunity

A Harvard Conference will be held on campus in August, and the HPAIR team is preparing for the panel discussion.

Here is the website for HPAIR:

http://www.hpair.org/

They are recuiting IDAS and IMAS researchers to help them with the panel preparation.  As you see below email, they need some help right away.

The panels are:

1. International Development (Human Rights)
2. Environment (Energy and environment)
3. Security
4. Economic developemt and integration
5. Entrepreneurship (Innovation and Technology)
6. Asian Identity (Democratization)
7. Society (Public Diplomacy)

Huong Le Thu will be the main contact at IDAS, so contect her if you are interested.

Please help if you can.  This is a volunteer (i.e. unpaid) project, but the value is high. I’m sure the word “Harvard” will look good on a resume.

Welcome

My friends: the great experiment!

It occurred to me a little while back that, unless you are all really good at systematically organizing, collating and meticulously filing you email using the Dewey Decimal system, it might be hard to keep track of conference information and publishing opportunities that I send out, so I figured I would experiment with a blog.

I’ve never done a blog before. When I was a kid, “blog” was a bad word. I won’t tell you what it meant.

So I hope you find this more convenient and a bit easier on the eyes than my usual communique.

Also, it’s not my blog: it’s our blog, so feel free to post here directly if you have information that you think would be of interest to our fellow IDAS, IMAS and other students.

To that end, I will try to phase out the communique once the blog  gets its sea legs. In the meantime, I would appreciate your input by way of the new and convenient comments section.

Let me know what you think!

Cheers,

Dean

 

Pepper Spray

Given the prevalence of wyld dogs on campus, you may want to protect yourself, so if you want a can of pepper spray, I still have some left.

Again, there are 3 types:

1. Pepper spray that looks like a lipstick.

2. Pepper spray that looks like a pen.

3. Pepper spray that looks like pepper spray.

Contact me if you want one.

Film, Literature and Art

Thanks to Kevin for this one: A Conference will be held September 7th-8th 2012 at Bangor University, Wales on “Cultural Translation and East Asia: Film, Literature and Art”

Information on the conference and the call for papers can be found on their website:

https://sites.google.com/site/culturaltranslationbangorwales/

If you do end up going to Wales, here’s hoping you can take in a rugby game!