英文摘要 |
This paper traces the missionary trails built by foreign Catholic priests who spread the gospel in the 1950s in the Eastern Hsinchu Deanery, leading from Hakka areas to aboriginal tribes in the mountains. I interpret the missionary work of foreign priests as transcultural encounters between the global and the local. Missionary work connects at least two groups of people of different nationalities. People who are actively involved in the process have to negotiate, cooperate, or mediate the divergences of cultural background and social conditions, which materialize in the mediation or transference of different situations and interactions. Tangible, visible and touchable visual cultures are the media that narrate those experiences across time and space.This research applies the materialist turn in visual studies by viewing photos and architecture as objects of life stories that embody or reveal transcultural processes and actions of boundary drawing or constitution. Based on such premises, this research examines the religious activities inside the churches built on the missionary trails, and explores the transcultural contacts as materialized in pertinent visual objects (including the landscape, architecture, inner designs, ritual ceremonies and archival photos of these churches) co-created by Catholic priests who entered the area in the mid-20th century and the natives who had settled in the areas in Hsinchu. |