2026-05-28
Event Recap: 2026 IACS Gathering
2026 IACS Gathering 亞際文化研究學程交流分享會
Venue: Da Yong Building, National Chengchi University
Event Date: 2026/5/16 (Saturday) 13:00-17:00
Written by Yu-Jyun Zhen (曾昱郡), MA student, IACS-NCCU
The 2026 Inter-Asian Cultural Studies (IACS) Gathering was jointly organised by the International Master's Degree Program in IACS, National Chengchi University (NCCU) and the International Master's Degree Program in IACS, University System of Taiwan (UST) on May 16, 2026, NCCU campus. The 12th annual gathering witnessed the participation of 26 graduate students, alumni, and 11 faculty members from all four participating universities (UST), fostering an engaging and immersive exchange of knowledge and ideas.
The presentation by 7 students organised into two panels included a wide array of topics, emphasising multiple points of cultural intersection anchored around media consumption and circulation, gender and queer theory, visual culture and conflict journalism, adopting paper presentations, data visualisation, and audio-video art screenings as ways of sharing ideas, followed by extensive comments and conversation by faculty members as individual discussants for the presenting students.
Panel 1: Gender, Queer Subjectivity, Visual Politics, and Diasporic Narratives
Discussions in Panel 1 focused primarily on gender, queer subjectivities, visual politics, and diasporic narratives.
Hsi-Wen Liao (廖希文), National Tsing Hua University, examined alternative gender and sexual identities in Otaku literature, exploring how marginalised forms of gender expression challenge conventional understandings of sexuality and identity. Drawing on historical and literary analyses of gender and sexuality discourses, he investigated how practices of “re-gendering” and “counter-gendering” reconfigure notions of a third gender and contribute to a genealogy of “character genders” and other alternative subject positions.
Xue-Song Liu (劉雪松), National Central University, reads Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee, drawing upon Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Affect theory. Recognising that existing studies have either “over-politicised” the novel's historical context or applied superficial, fragmented treatments to the theme of shame, Xue-Song offers a “reparative reading”. Specifically, it aims to connect the main character David Lurie's "interstitial, marginalised existence" with the affect of shame, explaining how this specific emotional experience allows him to transform his subjectivity, repair his relationships with the world, and overcome his deep existential anxiety in a post-truth society.
Yu-Jyun Zhen (曾昱郡), National Chengchi University, analysed gender politics and representations of female agency in the controversial rape-revenge film "I Spit on Your Grave" (1978). Drawing on feminist film theory and structuralism, she examined how cinematic representations of violence shape understandings of female empowerment and gendered subjectivity. Through a multi-layered framework addressing visual representation, spectatorship, and ideological power, her presentation questioned whether narratives of female revenge genuinely challenge patriarchal structures or ultimately reproduce them.
Xin-Lei Yang (楊心蕾), National Central University, explored literary representations of self-combed women (自梳女) and discussed how diasporic narratives negotiate gender, identity, and cultural memory.Focusing on diasporic novels by Gail Tsukiyama (Women of the Silk, The Language of Threads) and Ruthanne Lum McCunn (The Moon Pearl), the presentation described how these narratives utilise cultural liminality to navigate identity politics. Xin-Lei argues that while these texts successfully disrupt Western stereotypes of submissive Asian women by framing zishu nu as symbols of resistance, they simultaneously risk exoticising these historical realities to fit Western narratives of progressive individual triumph.
Panel 2: Media Culture, Perception, and and Platform Politics
Panel 2 turned to questions of media culture, sensory experience, and digital platform politics.
Tzu-Chiao Liu (劉姿喬), National Chengchi University, presented a comparative case study on the cross-regional circulation of mainland Chinese idol dramas through global streaming platforms and its implications for Taiwanese television. Focusing on shifts in the post-pandemic media landscape, she examined the contrasting trajectories of Taiwan’s locally oriented “New Taiwanese Dramas” and the growing international popularity of Chinese romantic idol dramas. Her presentation highlighted how streaming platforms facilitate the formation of transnational “taste communities” and raised questions about the limitations of Taiwan’s current strategies for global media circulation.
Man-Ting Tang (唐曼婷), National Chengchi University, adopting a phenomenological and ‘practice-as-research’ approach, demonstrated how sound, bodily movement, and spatial perception generate structural meaning. Tang’s presentation, which combined text and musical artefacts, re-examined the dynamic processes of musical performance, challenging traditional definitions of sound by asking whether natural phenomena like wind or waterfalls can truly be classified as "noise," and urging the audience to understand noise outside of existing musicological frameworks and theories.
Instead of treating noise as a mere disruption, Tang positions her work as a "resistant narrative art"—a performance deeply intertwined with narratives of political and artistic resistance where structure paradoxically emerges from conceptual rupture.
Satvik Singh (辛賢凱), National Central University, presented his ongoing work on the mediatisation of the 2025 India-Pakistan conflict across print and digital media, drawing attention to the ways in which media texts and practices are shaping politics and eventually engagement for the national audience. The investigation employs content analysis to examine newspapers as literary products with specific focus on style, form and visual placement of text on the page as constitutive of meaning-making of the conflict. Historicising ‘conflict journalism’ in the inter-Asian context, Satvik notes stylistic variation in the narration of conflict in print and digital media, suggesting a departure from traditional forms of journalism towards conceptualising conflict coverage as a cross-platform, cross-genre media and cultural practice.
Prof. Hui-Wen Liu, NCCU, at the close of the event, extended greetings and support to participants and volunteers for the successful organisation of the program and highlighted the significance of fostering cross-cultural understanding and emphasis on newer ways of knowledge production as part of an organised and institutionalised effort to develop an inter-Asian framework.
Following the rigorous deliberations of the 12th IACS Gathering at NCCU, participants engaged in a convivial post-event reception at a local restaurant near the campus, where they continued their dialogues, network building, and collaborative planning for future works.
