Sixth Annual Conference on the History and Culture of Taiwan
May 3-4, 2002

"Mapping a New Cultural Geography: Taipei, Hong Kong, and Shanghai as Global Cities"
Washington University in St. Louis

The Research Group of Taiwanese History and Culture (RGTHC), in cooperation with the Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures Department and East Asian Studies Program at Washington University, and the Graduate Institute of Cultural Studies and Research Center for Emergent Cultural Studies at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, propose the following theme for the sixth annual conference on the History and Culture of Taiwan: "Mapping a New Cultural Geography: Taipei, Hong Kong, and Shanghai as Global Cities." The conference is to be held on May 3-4, 2002 in the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

The figure of "global village" is emblematic of the intense critical interest which has recently been directed to rethinking different theoretical conceptualizations and methodological approaches to the increasingly transnational terrain of modern urban topographies. Focusing on the different dimensions of urban social, spatial, and cultural reality, these studies have converged on the topic of the global city.

In 1991, Saskia Sassen proposed that a hierarchy of global cities has emerged. These global cities should be seen as constituting a system rather than competing with each other. Instead of looking at the world as composed of a body of nations, Sassen's examination suggests that a new kind of global spatial/geographical order has been formed and a different inter- and cross- cultural map can be drawn. Taking Sassen's proposal one step further, Paul L. Knox argues that the economic link of these cities has created a global urban culture that is integrated in the cultures within these cities and allows them to have more in common with each other than with the cultures of the state where the city exists.

Using the above statement as its theoretical framework, the conference proposes to investigate the common urban experiences shared by Taipei, Hong Kong, and Shanghai -- three of the most cosmopolitan and global Chinese cities -- and asks what stake it would involve if a new cultural geography is to be conceived.

We seek panels and discussions that address the following and related issues:

* What perspectives can we deploy to investigate the different and yet similar cosmopolitan cultures of Taipei, Hong Kong, and Shanghai?

* How do cultures of these three cities work in practice and how are they embedded in everyday-life situations as locatable phenomena?

* What approaches can we use to explore the experience of place and space, the dynamics between local and global, culture and economy, and the dilemmas of knowledge?

* How do states, empires and nations, corporations, shops and goods, literature, music, film, etc. figure in our examination of the cultures of consumption and production?

*How do places develop meanings for people? What are the struggles over defining who belongs in a place?

* What role does travel, information technology, or other means of communication play in shaping a global city network among these three cities and beyond?

Please send or email proposals for panels or abstracts (not to exceed 250 words) by Feb. 15, 2002 to the following address:

Prof. Lingchei Letty Chen
Campus Box 1111
One Brookings Drive
Washington University
St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
email: llchen@artsci.wustl.edu