Several years have passed since the publication of The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan (2020). The publication of the (traditional) Chinese version in early 2023 has generated another round of discussion in the Chinese-speaking world outside of China. In this talk, the speaker will reflect on the main arguments and theories of memory proposed by the book in light of the recent developments in Taiwan and elsewhere. The legacy of the Chinese Civil War is very much alive, given the current tension between Taiwan and the PRC. But could the narratives of the people who actually lived through the conflict survive in the contemporary memory scene? Are these memories still important, and to whom? What can the Civil War memories coming out of democratized Taiwan tell us about the scholarship on the final struggle for China between the KMT and the CCP? These are the questions that will be discussed with the audience.

About the Speaker:
Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Missouri-Columbia. He specializes in war trauma, refugee displacement, and memory studies in modern Taiwan and Hong Kong. His works appear in China Perspectives, Taiwanshi yanjiu (Taiwan Historical Research), Journal of Chinese Overseas, and Journal of Chinese History. His current projects examine the White Terror in 1950s Taiwan and the memorial landscape and transnational justice in Taiwan since democratization. His book The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan won the Memory Studies Association First Book Award in 2020-2021.

This event is sponsored by Stanford Libraries, the East Asia Library, the National Central Library (Taiwan), and the Taiwan Resource Center for Chinese Studies (TRCCS).