During the 2024–2025 academic year, the UW Taiwan Studies Arts & Culture Program presented a dynamic slate of public programs exploring Taiwan’s history, identity, and cultural expression. In collaboration with the UW Tateuchi East Asia Library, TaiwanPlus, and the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (Taiwan), we launched Love, Taipei, a two-part program featuring a pop-up exhibit and an ongoing online film festival of eight digitally restored romance films set in Taipei which ran from November through April.
In January, we co-hosted Absolute Sonatas, a violin and piano recital featuring UW alumna Li-Cheng Hung and violinist Emily Acri. The recital blends classical works with personal and contemporary compositions. In March, we commemorated the 228 Incident with a screening of In Search of a Mixed Identity (2024), co-presented with the Taiwanese Association of Greater Seattle and Seed Kite Foundation. The screening was followed by a Q&A with the co-directors and a surprise appearance by the great-granddaughter of Thng Tek-Chiong, the film’s subject.
Our April 228 Memorial Program, co-sponsored with local and international partners—the UW Tateuchi East Asia Library, the 228 Memorial Foundation (Taiwan), the Culture Center of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Seattle, and the Taiwanese Association of Greater Seattle, included a library exhibition, Echoes of History, Calls of Memory, a guided exhibition tour with the National 228 Memorial Museum (Taiwan), a roundtable on transitional justice featuring scholars from Taiwan and the U.S.: Dr. Sylvia Li-Chun Lin, Dr. James Lin, and Dr. Wen-Tang Shiu, and film screenings of Super Citizen Ko (1995) and March of Happiness (1997), each introduced and followed by Q&A sessions with scholars specializing in the historical memory and cinematic representation of political violence. The program concluded with a Taiwanese-language roundtable on the future of transitional justice with Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and Academia Historica (Taiwan).
Additional programming included an online screening on TaiwanPlus and a roundtable discussion on Port of Lies (2023), addressing labor, migration, and environmental justice. Co-presented with the UW Taiwanese Graduate Student Association, the event featured panelists from Taiwan with expertise in social work, Indigenous activism, and ocean governance, including Yi-Cai Hsiao, Dr. Wen-Ning Chang, and Yi-Yu Lai. Finally, in partnership with the Dream Flare Film Festival, we screened two films featuring musician Chen Ming-Chang, On the Train (2022) and Free Beats: The Musical Journey of Chen Ming-Chang (2023), celebrating his role in shaping Taiwan’s musical and cultural identity.
Coming in June 2025, we will join Seattle Pride alongside the UW Taiwanese Graduate Student Association and the Taiwanese Association of Greater Seattle to co-organize a panel discussion with former legislator Yu Mei-Nu and former judge Remington Huang from Taiwan. In August, we will collaborate with the Seattle Taiwanese Language Association to co-present Taiwan World Portrait: Art as a Global Dialogue, a weeklong program featuring a workshop, public lecture, and film screening focused on overseas Taiwanese oral histories.
Bringing such a wide range of programming to the UW and greater Seattle community has deepened public understanding of Taiwan’s cultural complexity and fostered vital cross-cultural dialogue among academic, diasporic, and public audiences.
Made in Taiwan: Arts & Culture of Contemporary Taiwan
Ellen Chang, Director of Arts & Culture at the Taiwan Studies Program, teaches an annual undergraduate course that explores contemporary Taiwan through film, music, and media. The course examines how cultural productions become sites of cross-cultural encounter and identity formation, reflecting and shaping Taiwan’s dynamic society both on and beyond the island.