【Tamkang Times】The Department of English held the 6th Tamkang International Conference on Ecological Discourse on December 19th and 20th in the Chueh-sheng International Conference Hall. Educators from 12 different countries attended the conference to share their experience on the subject including, Joni Adamson, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Priscilla Wald, Serpil Oppermann, Serenella Lovino, Peter Hajdu and more.

The Tamkang International Conference on Ecological Discourse has been taking place since 2000. The conference includes professional critiques and reading materials regarding issues in Taiwan’s Eco-environment, Ecofeminism and Environmental Justice and Equality. The previous conferences have discussed dealing with crisis in nature, space, the human body and personality traits through creating a culture that emphasizes sustained strategic development. For the 5th conference they discussed issues involving the conflicts that Asia is faced with due to modernization.

Director of the Department of English, Chen-Hsing Tsai, stated, “For this year’s ecology conference the main theme is Speculative Materialism: Contexts and Paradigms for Ecological Engagement. This concept of speculative materialism, which is basically correlationism was developed by a French philosopher named Quentin Meillasoux. The purpose of the conference was to map out this concept along with Speculative Realism, to determine it’s application and effectiveness in an academic setting.