Humanities for the Environment (HFE) Distinguished Lecture, Seres Puentes Award

Humanities for the Environment (HFE) Distinguished Lecture, Seres Puentes Award.

Celebratory news from the BRIDGES Flagship Hub at ASU.

At the 2026 Humanities for the Environment (HFE) Distinguished Lecture, Professor Hsinya Huang, a Distinguished Professor of American and Comparative Literature at Taiwan’s National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU), was honoured as the latest recipient of the Seres Puentes Award.

Since its inception in 2005, this accolade, which translates from Spanish as "Bridge-Being" or "Bridge Builder", has recognised scholars, writers, and public servants dedicated to the humanities and the pursuit of equity and justice for all living things.

Professor Huang’s lecture, titled "Islanding the Pacific: Syaman Rapongan’s Oceanic Poetics and Indigenous Relationality", delved into the literary contributions of Syaman Rapongan, a leading Tao writer from Lanyu (Orchid Island), Taiwan.

The presentation examined "islanding" as an Indigenous epistemological and relational method. This perspective presents an archipelagic cosmology where islands are not isolated landmasses but living nodes in a web of oceanic connections. In this worldview, stars, tides, currents, whales, and fish are regarded as the agents of memory and history.

The lecture further explored how embodied practices, including seasonal fishing and the building of tatala (canoes), transform territorial borders into oceanic routes. Drawing on the work of Epeli Hau‘ofa, Teresia Teaiwa, and Craig Santos Perez, the session concluded by positioning islanding as a foundational framework for oceanic solidarity and decolonial memory.

The recording can be viewed here.

Further information can be found here.