On March 4, the National Central Library, in partnership with Stanford University, jointly hosted a lecture titled "Trauma and Memory of the Chinese Civil War in Taiwan: Historical Transformation and Contemporary Implications". The lecture was delivered by Dr. Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang, marking the inaugural event of the 2024 "Taiwan Lectures on Chinese Studies."
Dr. Dominic Meng-Hsuan Yang is Associate Professor in 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.
Following the publication of the traditional Chinese version of the book The Great Exodus from China: Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Modern Taiwan in early 2023, which sparked renewed discussions in the Chinese-speaking world outside of China, Prof. Yang reflected on the main arguments and memory theories proposed in his work during the lecture. He addressed questions about whether narratives from those who lived through the Chinese Civil War could endure in today’s memory landscape, the current significance of these memories, and what Taiwan’s democratic experience might reveal about the final struggle between the KMT and the CCP.
The Q&A session at the end of the lecture was marked by enthusiastic engagement and lively discussion. Attendees provided positive feedback on the organization of the event, noting that it significantly deepened their understanding of Taiwan's approaches to war trauma and transitional justice.