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.

This timely collection demonstrates the blossoming of critical plant studies in Taiwan, an island of distinctive botanical diversity. Through phytocritical readings of diverse literary and cultural materials, contributors call attention to a range of absorbing topics—from plantation histories and tea poetry to rooftop gardens and millet cultivation—as well as a variety of urban, rural, and wild vegetal agents. Reflecting the multidimensionality of human-flora relations in Taiwan, this landmark publication is the first of its kind to foreground the emergence of the field within a specific cultural context.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: Greedflation and Sugarcane Landscaping in Taiwan: A Transcultural Reading of Lord of Formosa by Joyce Bergvelt- Theodoor A.M. RichardChapter 2: Empire’s Nature: Economics, Ecology, and Formosan Tea in Nineteenth-Century Western Travelers’ Natural Histories- Li-Ru LuChapter 3: Oriental Beauty: The Tea Plantations and Global Tea Trade in 19th-century Taiwan- Iping LiangChapter 4: From Resonance to Solastalgia: Tea Poems of Taiwan, ca. 1820-1920- Stephen RoddyChapter 5: Brothers Locked in Strife: A Molecular Reading of Blood Camphor - Ya-feng WuChapter 6: Beyond Cold War Afforestation: Trans-scalar Imaginary of Casuarinas- Weibon WuChapter 7: Mangrove Taiwan: A Birdman’s View of an Island Environmental Identity- Rose Hsiu-li JuanChapter 8: Politics of Femininity, Politics of Plants: The Roof Garden in Zhu Tianwen’s “Fin De Siècle Splendor”- Pei-Wen Clio KaoChapter 9: “My head like a mushroom below”: Chen Kehua’s Vegetal Gothic and the Anthropocene - Li-hsin HsuChapter 10: Reclaiming the Commons: An Ambient Poetics in Jessica J. Lee’s Two Trees Make a Forest- Kathryn Yalan ChangChapter 11: The Cultural Narrative of Tayal “Millet Ark”- Yih-Ren Lin, Pagung Tomi, Hsinya Huang, Chia-Hua Lin and Ysanne ChenChapter 12: The Call of the Hyperobjects: Plants as Zones of Aesthetic Causality in Tao Lin’s Taipei - Chingshun J. SheuIndexAbout the Contributors