Philip Hesse is a Master’s student in East Asian Studies-Taiwan track at the University of Washington’s Jackson School. His main areas of interest center on how changes in legal frameworks and political transitions shape the development of historical memory and identity formation. He is particularly interested in how Taiwan’s historical experiences evince broader questions of historical reconciliation, governance, and cross-strait relations. Tin Pak, a Taiwan Studies Program Assistant, had a opportunity to interview Philip on his experiences thus far with the Jackson School.
How have your research interests evolved one year into the MA program? What topic are you thinking of researching for your thesis? How has your experience with Taiwan Studies shaped this focus?
When I began studying Taiwan, I was enamored by the complex history of this place I encountered while studying abroad as an undergrad at NTU. When I applied to the MA program, I initially intended to maintain a focus on piecing together a history that was much more complicated and richer in content than what is typically presented in the media. However, in the months prior to coming to Seattle, there was a series of political events in Taiwan that began to shift my focus to the present day. I’m an avid watcher of Taiwanese news, and it seemed evident to me that polarization was increasing just by the way media figures began to shift their language to being much more openly partisan than what I had observed before. The shifts did not seem to be isolated cases and led me to want to understand more deeply how Taiwan’s legal and political identity is articulated for domestic audiences on different sides of the political spectrum. My capstone paper touches on these themes by analyzing how Green and Blue media networks report on the same events to produce divergent realities for partisan audiences. By the time I began to work on my capstone paper, more events in Taiwan pointed to increased levels of partisanship being the case.
I can’t emphasize enough how pertinent a time the beginning of the graduate program in Taiwan studies is. Since I got to Seattle, the Great Recall Campaign, a new polarizing KMT chairwoman, and the current debate over Taiwan’s special defense package have all become newsworthy events. The increased levels of polarization that are noticeable from these developments make it important to understand how partisanship not only affects the outcomes of political debates in Taiwan but also how it works in the interim.
The UW Taiwan Studies program’s lecture series this year has invited speakers who have touched on many of these events, from Lev Nachman, who came to speak about his book Contested Taiwan, which helped me in my own work to understand how social movements work and develop in the Taiwanese case, to Ming-sho Ho’s presentation on the Great Recall Campaign. Being able to engage these developments in real time and then carry those conversations back into my coursework has been an incredibly valuable part of the program. Having taken coursework both within and outside the Jackson School has given me the tools to think about Taiwan comparatively, while still maintaining a focus on Taiwan as its own area of study.
As a student in the inaugural cohort of the new MA degree in East Asian Studies-Taiwan, what were your favorite and most meaningful experiences thus far? What advice do you have for those interested in joining the program in the future?
Since the MA program takes on a multidisciplinary approach to the study of East Asia, it is important to take advantage of all the resources made available, including those outside of your specific focus country. Outside of the Taiwan Studies program, the Jackson School hosts some of the best professors in Japan, China, and Korea studies, so make use of that connection. Taiwan is a wonderful comparative case within East Asia, and knowledge of the surrounding countries really helps contextualize one’s study of Taiwan. This goes for students who will choose any focus country in the region. The depth of the Jackson School’s faculty across East Asia is one of the program’s real strengths, and engaging with the community outside your focus area only makes your work stronger.
My most meaningful experiences this year have been a few. The first was taking Professor James Lin’s graduate course JSIS A 588-Making Modern Taiwan. It was the first course I have ever been able to take specifically on Taiwan, and the reading list for the course was just phenomenal. The second was being able to attend the two-day workshop “New Directions in Taiwan History: Taiwan at the Center and at the Margins,” where I had the chance to hear from academics across the country on their current research. Being able to be in a room where Taiwan was the center of the conversation as opposed to a subcategory of China studies was the kind of intellectual environment I had hoped graduate school would offer, and it confirmed for me that Taiwan studies as a field is in a generative moment.
For students considering the program, my advice is to take the program’s flexibility seriously and use it. Take courses in departments outside the Jackson School when you can, attend the lecture series and workshops even when the topic may be at the edge of your focus, and let your research questions narrow in response to what you encounter rather than what you arrived with. Mine narrowed in directions I could not have predicted, and that has been one of the most valuable parts of the first year.
How important is the study of Taiwan for the region and world more broadly?
While Taiwan has become a major focus in the news for its relationship with China and the United States, it is important not to allow Taiwan’s story to be subsumed within the narrative of great power rivalry. Much has been and is being written about this aspect of Taiwan, but for those who wish to embark on the study of Taiwan, there is so much more to explore. Taiwan’s experience provides powerful lessons on economic development, successful democratization, and identity formation. Taiwan’s multilayered colonial history and its trajectory from authoritarian rule to a vibrant democracy make it one of the most instructive cases in political economy.
In many ways, Taiwan is a miracle for what its people have been able to accomplish despite internal and external pressures. In Shelly Rigger’s book Why Taiwan Matters, Rigger explains very clearly that Taiwan matters because it punches way above its weight, and one learns very quickly that this translates to almost every aspect of Taiwan in all fields of study. The relatively small geographic and population size in comparison to its neighbors should not confuse anyone looking to learn about Taiwan. Every field of study on this dynamic place will take researchers far deeper than can be expected. Taiwan quickly grows out of the frame of cross-strait politics when one chooses to take a sustained look at it. In light of increasing geopolitical rivalry where Taiwan is caught in between it is thus evermore important that well-developed understandings of the island’s history are brought into the academy.
Taiwan for decades sat within China studies and the cost of such framing has led to less attention than what its global significance warrants. To be able to study Taiwan on its own merits, rather than as a subcategory of China studies, has been such a privilege. There is no place in the American context that can quite match what is being developed here at UW, where there is dedicated investment into the study of Taiwan at every level. The work being done here at UW is representative of what serious Taiwan studies in the United States can look like when the island is treated as central rather than peripheral. An exceedingly important project as the island gains more attention globally.