Becoming Taiwanese:
Religious Festivals and Ethnogenesis in Colonial Jilong
A lecture by Dr. Evan Dawley, Assistant Professor of History at Goucher College
Sponsored by the Department of History with support from the UTC Humanities Program, Asia Program, and College of Arts and Sciences
Friday, April 5, 11:00 AM
University Center, Chattanooga Room A
Dr. Evan Dawley will discuss how peoples of Taiwan have shaped, and continue to hold, multiple layers of nested identities by examining the roles and contributions of popular religion to a process of Taiwanese ethnogenesis that occurred during the first half of the twentieth century, when Taiwan was ruled in succession by Japanese and Chinese colonialist regimes. He will focus on the annual Ghost Festival and the northern port of Jilong (Keelung), to explore how people with origins in Southeast China forged a new Taiwanese ethnic consciousness.
Dr. Evan Dawley is the Assistant Professor of History at Goucher College. He specializes in the History of East Asia, especially China, Taiwan, and Japan with particular attention to colonialism, identity, ethnicity and nationalism, and maritime territorial disputes. He is author of the forthcoming book, Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City, 1880s-1950s (Harvard East Asian Monographs, 2019). He has published articles and book reviews in numerous leading journals and collections.