Associate Professor, East Asian Studies
School of Humanities

China, Taiwan, Fiction, Regionalism, Indigenization

Generally speaking my research focus is regional literature; I study the appearance of local culture in fiction from China and Taiwan. Through the lenses of postcolonialism and indigenization I have read closely and interpreted Taiwanese fiction written in Japanese and Chinese: the proletarian literature of Yang Kui; the urban narratives of Wang Shilang and Weng Nao; tales of rural doctors and cultural mimicry by Wang Changxiong and Wu Zhuoliu; the homegrown literature of Wang Zhenhe, Wu Mingyi, and Gan Yaoming; stories of women and colonialism by Zhang Bihua, Ye Tao, Huang Baotao, and Yang Qianhe; and the dystopian novels of Song Zelai and Egoyan Zheng (Yi Geyan). Similarly, through the lenses of memory and nature I have read closely and interpreted the rusticated youth writings of Liang Xiaosheng. In the end, through this interpretive critical practice I hope to eventually advance a theory of locality in Sinophone (華語) fiction in order to bring these and other writers into conversation with locality in Anglophone literature like the London of George Lamming or the California of John Steinbeck.

(2023). “Homegrown Stories: Gan Yao-ming’s Fiction.” Taiwan Literature in the 21st Century, C. Wu and M. Fan (Eds.). Singapore: Springer, 101-127.

(2020) “The Crises of Representation in Taiwan in Ruins and Ground Zero” National Taiwan University Studies in Taiwan Literature. No. 24, 83-112.

(2019). “It All Starts in Hualien: Pangcah Woman; Rose, Rose, I Love You; and The Man with the Compound Eyes.” Positioning Taiwan in a Global Context: Being and Becoming, B. Chang and P. Lin (Eds.). London: Routledge, 45-60.

(2015). Translingual Narration: Colonial and Postcolonial Taiwanese Fiction and Film. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

(2014). “Landscapes and Sublime Memories: Revisiting Liang Xiaosheng's ‘A Land of Wonder and Mystery.’” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 8.4, 513-531.

(2013). “The Postcolonial Appearance of Colonial Taiwan: Film and Memory.” Frontiers of Literary Studies in China, 7.2, 194-213.

(2012). “Cultivating Taiwanese: Yen Lan-chuan and Juang Yi-tseng's Let It Be (Wumile).” Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries, S. Lin and T. Sang. (Eds.). London: Routledge, 150-185.

(2006). “Narratives of Discomfort and Ideology: Yang Kui’s Short Fiction and Postcolonial Taiwan Orthodox Boundaries.” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, 14.2, 427-447.

(2004). “Identity and Free Will in Colonial Taiwan Fiction: Wu Zhuoliu’s ‘The Doctor’s Mother’ and Wang Changxiong’s ‘Torrent.’” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 16.2, 160-183.

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https://faculty.uci.edu/profile/?facultyId=5582

Last updated
03/15/2025