Graduate Program of Culture and History of Hokkien

The Graduate Program of Culture and History of Hokkien was established in 2006 as Institute of Culture and History of Hokkien, and changed to a graduate program in 2018. It is the only program in Taiwan, focusing on the culture and history Fukien, with special interest on Kinmen’s relation with the world via immigration, war history, and maritime transaction. Based on the training of sociology, anthropology and history, the program integrates digital technology to provide students with interdisciplinary courses to study the Kinmen society, and the cultural circle of Fukien in extenso. Accordingly, there are three main directions of research in the program.

1. Overseas Chinese and the studies of Qiaoxiang(僑鄉): the immigration has been a critical issue not only in the academic enterprises, but also in the contemporary society and politics. Yet, the Overseas Chinese plays an even more important role because of the rise of China on the one hand, and yet relatively less studied on the other. While Taiwan offers an excellent environment for the studies of Overseas Chinese, and Kinmen is the only Qiaoxiang in Taiwan, the National Quemoy University stands as a center for this field, and publishes, with Brill, the Translocal Chinese: East Asian Perspectives, which is a SCOPUS journal.
2. Kinmen culture and Museum studies: not only being famous for its cultural resources in Minnan(閩南), Qiaoxiang and battlefield, Kinmen occupies a critical node because of its geographic position to link mainland China and the ‘Asian Mediterranean Sea’ which has long been a prosperous maritime region before and after the arrival of the Occident. In other words, it is not only a frontline between China and Taiwan, but also the East and the West. Accordingly, the local and central governments sincerely support its cultural development, including the museums and tourism, which are the central concern of the program.
3. Digital humanity and the cultural industry: the development of digital technology leads to the rapid growth of digital humanity in the job market, as well as the governmental investment. Therefore, the program integrates scholars of the field in the University to elaborate related courses not only to make students even more competitive, but also to cooperate with the government and enterprise for the digitalization of cultural industry.

Faculty