Congratulations to BA Asian Studies student Aaron Throness for winning the North American Taiwan Association prize for the best undergraduate essay. The Undergraduate Scholarship Competition was hosted by the North American Taiwan Studies Association (NATSA) and accepted submissions from undergraduate students across North America.
Aaron Throness is a BA Major is Asian Area Studies, moving into his fourth year in the program this Fall. His research interests focus on Ming Dynasty military history, cartography, and international relations. Throness hopes to use the skills and knowledge he gained at UBC to pursue graduate studies in China after graduating in the Spring of 2020.
Throness’ essay investigates how the Ming Dynasty thought about and interacted with Taiwan, using Luo Hongxian’s Guangyu Tu (The Expanded Terrestrial Atlas, the edition studied was published in 1566) as a proxy. It studies the implicit and explicit elements that played a role in the atlas’ design and how they influenced the portrayal of Taiwan within it, ultimately striving to reconstruct the relationship in which they were engaged.
As his paper was selected as the winner, Throness will be representing UBC by presenting the paper at the University of Seattle for NATSA’s annual conference in May.
