Asia Pacific Observatory

Yu-lin Lee is Professor and Director of the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature and Transnational Cultural Studies, the Director of the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan. His research interests include literary theory, modern Taiwan literature and cinema, translation studies, environmental studies, and Deleuze studies. His recent publications include Writing Taiwan: A Study of Taiwan’s Nativist Literature (2008), Liminality of Translation: Subjectivity, Ethics, and Aesthetics (2009), and The Fabulation of a New Earth (2015). He is co-editor of Cyborg and Posthumanism (2013) and Deleuze and Asia (2014); he is also a Chinese translator of Ronald Bogue’s Deleuze on Literature (2006) and Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts (forthcoming). He is now working on a book project on digital archiving and historical memories. [E-mail: taiwanlit@gmail.com]

Chiahua Lin is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is the recipient of 2018 Fulbright Graduate Study Grant as well as the 2020 Government Scholarship to Study Abroad (GSSA) from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education. Her research interests include Trans-indigenous Studies, Ecopoetics, Hawaiian Literature, and Pacific Literature. She currently the secretary for the Asia Pacific Observatory of Humanities for the Environment. She is the co-editor of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America: Recovery and Representation and Pacific Literature as World Literature.

Neqou Soqluman is born in the East Valley of Yushan of Bunun tribe. With a master’s degree in ecology, he have founded ‘hunter’ schools, as they are known locally, which teach Indigenous outdoor skills, but more importantly emphasize traditional values. He establishes “The Son of Yushan—the Bunun Mountain Guide Tour” to promote tribal eco-turism of mountain hiking. He is also a writer, and his novel The Legend of East Valley Shafei is regarded as Taiwanese version of The Lord of the Ring. Neqou seeks to establish himself as a member of the Bunun tribe to share to the world its enchanting culture from language, ethnic literature, folk tales, ethnic ecological wisdom and traditional ballads.

Hsinya Huang is Distinguished Professor of American and Comparative Literature, National Sun Yat-Sen University (NSYSU), Taiwan. She is former Dean of Arts and Humanities and Provost of Academic Affairs and Faculty Advancement, NSYSU. She served as Director General of International Cooperation and Science Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, 2018-19. She is the author or editor of books and articles on Native American and Indigenous literatures, eco-criticism, transnational studies, including (De)Colonizing the Body: Disease, Empire, and (Alter)Native Medicine in Contemporary Native American Women’s Writings (2004) and Native North American Literatures: Reflections on Multiculturalism (2009), Aspects of Transnational and Indigenous Cultures (2014), Ocean and Ecology in the Trans-Pacific Context (2016), and Chinese Railroad Workers: Recovery and Representation (2017). She serves on the Advisory Board of The Journal of Transnational American Studies and Routledge series on Transnational Indigenous Perspectives and on the Editorial Board of Transmotion: A Journal of Vizenorian Indigenous Studies. Her current research project investigates the Anthropocene in trans-Pacific Indigenous and Arctic Writing.

Jasper Rong-feng Hsieh is Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan. He holds an MA in arts administration and a DBA with strategic management concentration, both from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, California. Prior to joining the academic community. He has been a senior arts administrator for different cities’ cultural agencies and professional arts organizations in Taiwan. Hsieh teaches arts management in graduate program and conducts research in the areas of strategic management and entrepreneurship in arts and cultural sectors. He engaged students in a series of experimental projects and action research related to the incorporation of tourism entrepreneurship and community development in the historic harbor district of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, local communities, and arts institutions. He has also been engaged in arts entrepreneuring and the sphere of innovation incubation, providing counseling on the establishment, management, and marketing of cultural and creative micro-enterprises in local communities.