Abstract
This thesis proposes that the developments of Asian American literary studies in Taiwan are entangled with problems of transnational knowledge production coloniality. Asian American literary studies in Taiwan not only marks the evolvements of American minority literary studies and the reactions to American classic literary studies in Taiwan. It also represents the battlefield of global knowledge economy and exposes the question of local knowledge production coloniality. Through the lens of “niche imagination,” this thesis exhibits the problematic knowledge production condition pervading Taiwan in a transnational context, and then moves to display how the condition of knowledge coloniality influences the developments of Asian American literary studies in Taiwan. Asian American literary studies is an important legacy of Asian American movements in the 1960s that seek for justice and fight against the racialist, capitalist and imperialist deprivations. In this light, Asian American literary studies in Taiwan under the frame of Foreign Languages and Literature Department should be careful about its position in global and local knowledge production. This thesis argues that Asian American literary studies in Taiwan should cross the disciplinary boundaries and be connected to Taiwan’s local conditions. Thereupon, literary knowledge production could unfold the local cultural and political agency so as to make the Asian American spirit keep working.