The 4th International Conference on Vietnamese and Taiwanese Studies took place this year at National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan on the 23rd and 24th of November. The conference is the largest of its kind outside of Vietnam, and this year's event exceeded the previous, 3rd International Conference (2016) in attendance. Scholars of Vietnamese and Taiwanese studies, including leading authorities in many fields of social sciences and humanities from Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Singapore, France, and the USA, presented papers addressing the theme of international cooperation and sustainable development. A wide variety of topics were represented, including linguistics, culture and arts, religion, ethnic minorities, and education.
Dr. Binh Ngo, Director of Harvard’s Vietnamese Language program, delivered the keynote address at the 3rd International Conference in 2016. This year, Ngo presented three papers on a variety of topics, chaired a panel on Vietnamese linguistics, and served as discussant in a colleague's presentation on general linguistics. One of Ngo’s papers, titled “Chinese loanwords in Vietnamese,” charted the complex history and linguistic features of Chinese loanwords in Vietnam, and explained how best to introduce them to Vietnamese language learners at different proficiency levels. Former Harvard Asia Center visiting scholar and former visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute Ngoc Tho Nguyen (currently of Boston University) also had a paper accepted at the Conference: “When the sage becomes a ‘god’: the spiritualized Confucian Sect of Minh Đức Nho giáo Đại đạo in Southern Vietnam.”
Selected papers delivered at the conference will appear in the Journal for Vietnamese Studies, published by the Center for Vietnamese Studies at National Cheng Kung University.
*This article was edited 12/12/19 to reflect Ngoc Tho Nguyen's current position at BU.