Exchanges between the Taiwanese Experience and World Experiences: Interactions, Innovations, Reflections
Thursday 17 and Friday 18 June 2027
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (Inalco), 2 rue de Lille, 75007 Paris
In the contemporary world, “gender” can no longer be understood merely as a social category, an identity, or a specific issue within equality policies. It has become an essential analytical method for understanding how modern societies function. Whether one is concerned with family, labor, education, art, law, religion, social movements, public policy, international relations, or the production of knowledge itself, gender plays a fundamental role in shaping how individuals are seen, treated, recognized, integrated into society, and allowed to imagine the future.
The importance of gender studies lies precisely in its capacity to re-examine social, cultural, and institutional arrangements that have long been regarded as natural, traditional, or self-evident. Why does care work so often fall to women? Which victims are commemorated in historical narratives, and which wounds remain silenced? How does the school system teach the body, intimacy, and differences? How do cultural exchanges represent women, queer people, indigenous peoples, and minorities? How does art engage with the body, desire, violence, and identity? How do social movements succeed in transforming institutions? And how do different societies redefine gender justice in contexts of globalization, democratization, postcoloniality, post-authoritarian transition, and digital mediation?
This conference takes gender as its point of departure and proposes the general theme: “Exchanges between the Taiwanese Experience and World Experiences.” By “Taiwanese experience,” we do not intend to place Taiwan at the exclusive center of the discussion, nor to treat other social and cultural experiences as merely secondary points of comparison. On the contrary, the aim is to consider Taiwan as an important node within the global networks of gender studies. Through comparison and dialogue between Taiwan and different regions, cultures, and historical trajectories, this conference seeks to rethink the theoretical, methodological, and practical possibilities of gender studies in the contemporary world.
If Taiwan can serve as a particularly fruitful point of reference for this dialogue, it is because of the great complexity of its history. Taiwan has experienced successive forms of colonial rule, a postwar authoritarian regime, Cold War structures, democratization, Taiwanization, a multilingual and multi-ethnic society, indigenous rights movements, marriage equality, transitional justice policies, the construction of a long-term care system, and practices of cultural diplomacy. These multiple trajectories have enabled Taiwan to develop specific questions and practical experiences in the field of gender studies. However, these experiences do not concern Taiwan alone: they have their place in a dialogue with other societies, such as transitional justice experiences in South Korea, South Africa, Germany, Latin America, or Eastern Europe; care and family policies in Japan, France, Canada, or the Nordic countries; controversies surrounding gender education in Europe, the Americas, and Asia; body politics and cultural representations in the Global South and indigenous communities; and political experiments related to gender equality, queer rights, migrant care work, and cultural diplomacy in different countries.
Thus, this conference does not seek only to ask: “What are the specific traits of the Taiwanese experience?” It proposes, more broadly, to raise the following questions: How can the Taiwanese experience dialogue with world experiences? How can gender practices developed in different societies help us reread Taiwan? Faced with crises of care, historical wounds, educational conflicts, cultural translations, artistic representations, and political reforms, can societies jointly develop perspectives and methods that are comparable, translatable, open for discussion, and adaptable to different contexts?
This conference welcomes contributions from researchers, teachers, creators, and practitioners working in fields including Taiwan studies, gender studies, sociology, anthropology, history, education studies, literature, art studies, political science, international relations, public policy, cultural studies, indigenous studies, religious studies, performing arts, museum studies, and social movement studies. Through this interdisciplinary and transregional dialogue, we seek to build a platform that is centered neither on a single country nor on a single theoretical tradition, so that Taiwanese experiences and world experiences may, through their reciprocal encounter, produce new possibilities of knowledge.
For the full CFP document check here.