“Studying the histories of China and Japan at a liberal arts college transformed my life as an early twenty-something, and set me on a path that I have been following and creating ever since. The opportunity to open those doorways for 抖陰神器’s students is what continues to drive me forward on that road.”
Evan Dawley
Associate ProfessorHistory
Evan Dawley is Associate Professor of History at 抖陰神器 College, where he has taught since 2013, and he previously worked in the Office of the Historian at the U.S. Department of State. His research relates to modern East Asian history, with particular attention to Taiwan, China, and Japan, as well as identity formation, imperialism, and international/transnational history. His first monograph, Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City, 1880s-1950s, was published in 2019 by the Harvard Asia Center Press; it has been translated into Chinese and published as 《成為台灣人：殖民城市基隆下的民族形成 (1880s-1950s)》by the National Taiwan University Press (2021). His second book, Taiwan: A People’s History, was published by Reaktion Books in 2026. He has published essays on Japanese women settlers in Taiwan during the 1910s, the deportation of Japanese from Taiwan after 1945, post-war urban reconstruction in the Republic of China, and the memory of the 2-28 Incident in Taiwan during the 1990s. He has co-edited The Decade of the Great War: Japan and the Wider World in the 1910s, with Tosh Minohara and Tze-ki Hon (Brill, 2014), and is co-editor of Beyond Versailles: The 1919 Moment in East Asia, with Tosh Minohara (Lexington Books, 2021). In his new project, tentatively titled “China, Chinese Abroad, and the International Construction of the Modern Nation-State, 1920s-1970s,” he explores the relations between the ROC government and communities of Chinese and Taiwanese abroad, and interactions with foreign governments about these communities, from the 1920s to the 1970s.
Research, Scholarship, Creative Work in Progress
My first book, , sought to answer two main questions: who are the Taiwanese, and how did they become so in the context of multiple waves of colonization? Focusing on the social history of Taiwan’s northern port city of Jilong, I uncovered a history of identity construction that challenges standard narratives of Taiwanese national identity and argues for a process of ethno-genesis and a dynamic, overlapping but not coterminous, relationship between ethnicity and nationalism. My second book, , is a survey history of Taiwan over a period of roughly 8,000 years that centers the experiences of its inhabitants as it explains the history of contemporary Taiwan. In my ongoing research, I am looking at the process of national construction, and the fissures within the modern nation-state, by exploring how national identities are constructed across and between states through outreach to, and disputes around, overseas Chinese or Taiwanese communities in British Malaya, French Vietnam, Japan, and the United States.
Publications
Taiwan: A People's History, Reaktion Books, June 2026
“Transformative Agendas: Post-war Gazetteers and the Reconstruction of Urban Taiwan, 1945-1960,” Twentieth-Century China 47:2 (May 2022): 194-214
“Sacred Geographies of Urban Colonial Taiwan: Jilong’s Geography in Transformation,” in Bodies & Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History, David Ambaras and Kate McDonald, eds., (2022)
Primary Sources on Taiwan, co-editor with Wayne Soon and contributor,
“Taiwan in Transformation: The Japanese Colonial Era,” in Assessing the Landscape: Taiwan and Korean Studies in Comparison, Niki J.P. Alsford, Sojin Lim, and J. Bruce Jacobs, eds., Brill, 2021
Becoming Taiwanese: Ethnogenesis in a Colonial City, 1880s-1950s, Harvard University Asia Center Press, May 2019
Beyond Versailles: The 1919 Moment in East Asia, co-editor with Tosh Minohara, under contract with Lexington Books, forthcoming
The Decade of the Great War: Japan’s Interactions with the Wider World in the 1910s, co-editor with Tosh Minohara and Tze-ki Hon, Brill, 2014
“China, Japan, and Overseas Chinese: The International Process of Nation-State Building during the May Fourth Era,” in Beyond Versailles: The 1919 Moment in East Asia, Minohara and Dawley, eds., Lexington Books, forthcoming
“Finding Meaning in Time and Space: Periodisation and Taiwan-Centred History,” International Journal of Taiwan Studies, August 2018
“Closing a Colony: The Meanings of Japanese Deportation from Taiwan after World War II,” in Japanese Taiwan: Colonial Rule and its Contested Legacy, edited by Andrew Morris, Bloomsbury Press, 2015
“Women on the Move: Shifting Patterns in Migration and the Colonization of Taiwan,” in The Decade of the Great War: Japan’s Interactions with the Wider World in the 1910s, Minohara, Hon, and Dawley, eds., Brill, 2014
Conference Papers & Panel Participation
Participant in roundtable on “Oberlin Shansi in China and Taiwan: The Transformation of a Transnational Educational Mission” Historical Society for the Study of Twentieth-Century China Bi-Annual Conference, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, August 4, 2026
Participant in panel on “History of ‘Teaching Abroad,’” International Conference on Migration and Knowledge Transfer: Focusing on the History of Study Abroad at National Cheng Chih University, Taipei, Taiwan, August 3, 2026
Participant in roundtable on “Bringing Taiwan Studies to Wider Audiences: Publications, Media, and Public Engagement” SOAS Taiwan Studies Summer School, London, UK, July 3, 2026
Participant in roundtable on “Frameworks for Investigating Taiwanese Overseas: A Roundtable Discussion” Asian Studies Conference-Japan, Tokyo, Japan, July 7-8 2025
“Moving the Gods: Defining Sacred and Profane Space in Colonial Taiwan” for panel on “Religion and the Diversification of Modern Taiwanese Culture,” Fifth World Congress of Taiwan Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, May 21, 2025
“Suppressing Colonial Memories to Enforce Neo-Colonialism: The Republic of China and Japanese Imperialism in Taiwan” for workshop on “Authoritarian Manipulation of History and Human Rights Abuses Xinjiang, Taiwan, Ukraine, Russia” University of Chicago, May 12-13, 2023
Invited Talks
“The Multiple Trajectories of a Taiwanese-centric History,” SOAS Taiwan Studies Summer School, London, UK, June 29, 2026
“Building China Abroad: The Republic of China and the Overseas Chinese,” The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., April 30, 2026
“Cracks in the Nation: The Republic of China and Its Diasporas, 1927-1954,” Taiwan Studies 2.0 Workshop, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, April 17, 2026
“Peace Through Understanding?: A Survey of Taiwan’s Historical Trajectories,” Alison Des Forges Symposium “Peace and Justice in the Taiwan Strait,” University of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, April 16, 2026
“Making Citizens: China and the Overseas Taiwanese in Occupied Japan,” Bradley University, Peoria, IL, April 9, 2026
“The Taiwan Relations Act in Historical Perspective,” panel on The Taiwan Relations Act and Beyond: Reflections of a Diplomat, University of California Berkeley, April 7, 2026
“Similar Dreams, Different Beds: Taiwan’s Sunflower Movement and the Beijing Spring,” for retrospective panel on the history and impact of demonstrations in Beijing in 1989; University of Texas-Austin, September 26-27, 2019
“Becoming Taiwanese: Religious Festivals and Ethnogenesis in Colonial Jilong,” University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, April 5, 2019.
Academic or Professional Associations
Association of Asian Studies; American Historical Association; Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica; Historical Society for Twentieth Century China
Other Professional or Scholarly Activity
Program Committee for American Historical Association Annual Conference (2019); International Journal of Taiwan Studies Editorial Board (2022-Present); Historical Society for Twentieth Century China Board (2022-26)