Critical Plant Studies in Taiwan

Critical Plant Studies in Taiwan presents a historical overview of vegetal ecocriticism in Taiwan. Divided into 12 chapters, it examines the human-plant entanglements on the island. Covering a wide spectrum of topics, such as the imperial plant explorations, the military casuarina afforestation, the mangrove conservation movement, the ecofeminist rooftop garden, the Indigenous millet restoration, the underground mycorrhizal network in urban Taipei, etc., it discloses the phyto-politics in the historical context of the vegetal materialist condition of the island. Intersecting the poetics and politics of plant narratives, it presents the multispecies plantscapes of the island. The first of its kind, the collection launches the historical and localized critical plant studies in Taiwan.

Iping Liang is Distinguished Professor of English and American studies in the Department of English at National Taiwan Normal University.

Hsinya Huang is a Distinguished Professor of American and Comparative Literature, National Sun Yat-Sen University (NSYSU), Taiwan. She is the author or editor of books and articles on transnational and transpacific studies, Native American and Pacific Islander literatures, and humanities for the environment, including (De)Colonizing the Body: Disease, Empire, and (Alter)Native Medicine in Contemporary Native American Women's Writings (2004), Native North American Literatures: Reflections on Multiculturalism (2009), Aspects of Transnational and Indigenous Cultures (2014), Chinese Railroad Workers: Recovery and Representation (2017), Diaspora, Memory and Resurgence: Trans-Pacific Indigenous Writing and Practice (2021), and Radiation Ecologies in Trans-Pacific Indigenous Literature: After Hiroshima (forthcoming). She is former Dean of Arts and Humanities and Provost of Academic Affairs and Faculty Advancement, NSYSU, and served as Director General of International Cooperation and Science Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.