Biography
Facetiously dubbing himself “Made in Taiwan for the U.S.A.,” Sheng-mei Ma is a Chinese who has never stayed in China longer than one month in each visit, a Taiwanese who cannot speak the Taiwanese dialect, and an American whom mainstream Americans may view as “perennially alien.” A classic Asian Diasporic, Sheng-mei Ma (馬聖美) is “Taiwanese” to Chinese, “waishenren” (“mainlander”) to Taiwanese, and perhaps “Oriental” to his fellow Americans. This background accounts for his specialization in Asian Diaspora/Asian American studies and East-West comparative studies, as well as for his persistent analysis of cultural marginality in over a dozen single-authored scholarly books in English to date: Chinese Serial: Cannibalizing Classics, Colonial Slaves, Sino-Noir, and Taiwan (Bloomsbury); Cultural Bifocals: Chinese TV Series and Diaspora Fiction (Routledge); China Pop!: Pop Culture, Propaganda, Pacific Pop-Ups (The Ohio State UP); The Tao of S: America’s Chinee & the Chinese Century in Literature and Film (University of South Carolina Press and National Taiwan University Press); Off-White: Yellowface and Chinglish by Anglo-American Culture (Bloomsbury); Sinophone-Anglophone Cultural Duet (Palgrave Macmillan); The Last Isle: Contemporary Film, Culture and Trauma in Global Taiwan (Rowman and Littlefield); Alienglish: Eastern Diasporas in Anglo-American Tongues (Cambria); Asian Diaspora and East-West Modernity (Purdue University Press); Diaspora Literature and Visual Culture: Asia in Flight (Routledge); East-West Montage: Reflections on Asian Bodies in Diaspora (University of Hawaii Press); The Deathly Embrace: Orientalism and Asian American Identity (University of Minnesota Press, supported by the Rockerfeller Fellowship); and Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures (State University of New York Press). In addition to these works, he has published the following: Doing English in Asia: Global Literature and Culture; a collection of his Chinese poetry, Sanshi zuoyou (三十左右Thirty, Left and Right); Chenmo de shanhen (Silent Scars: History of Sexual Slavery by the Japanese Military—A Pictorial Book, bilingual edition), and numerous articles and book chapters. For his public-facing causerie of late, search on medium.com.
Works
Cultural Bifocals on Chinese TV Series and Diaspora Fiction. Routledge, 2025. https://www.routledge.com/Cultural-Bifocals-on-Chinese-TV-Series-and-Diaspora-Fiction/Ma/p/book/9781032836133
China Pop! Pop Culture, Propaganda, Pacific Pop-Ups. The Ohio State University Press, 2024. https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814215760.html
The Tao of S: America’s Chinee & the Chinese Century in Literature and Film in the book series “East-West Encounters in Literature & Cultural Studies” jointly published by the University of South Carolina Press (USCP) and National Taiwan University Press (NTUP), 2022.
On East-West: America’s Chinee & the Chinese Century in the book series “East-West Encounters in Literature & Cultural Studies” jointly published by University of South Carolina Press (USCP) and National Taiwan University Press (NTUP), 2021.
Ma, Sheng-mei. “Forgotten Taiwanese Veteran’s Memory of Compulsory Service.” Journal of Veteran Studies, vol. 6, no.3, 2020, pp. 23–29. DOI: https://journal-veterans-studies.org/articles/10.21061/jvs.v6i3.210/ or https://journal-veterans-studies.org/14/volume/6/issue/3/.
Ma, Sheng-mei. “China’s Orient in Fan de Siècle Culture.” Orientalism and Reverse Orientalism in Literature and Film: Beyond East and West. Edited by Sharmani Patricia Gabriel and Bernard Wilson. Routledge, 2020, pp. 1-25.
Ma, Sheng-mei. “Get Out of the Village: Watching The Prisoner with Chinese Subtitles in Juancun.” Specters of Tyranny: An Interdisciplinary Lens on Memory, Collective Consciousness, and Authoritarian Dictatorships. Orange County, R.M. Press, December 7, 2020, pp. 20-44, 140-143. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PXHCQKP
Ma, Sheng-mei. “Kung Flu.” America Unfiltered. May 8, 2020. https://www.ucdclinton.ie/commentary-content/kung-flu.
Off-White: Yellowface and Chinglish by Anglo-American Culture. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Sinophone-Anglophone Cultural Duet. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
The Last Isle: Contemporary Film, Culture and Trauma in Global Taiwan. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015.
Alienglish: Eastern Diasporas in Anglo-American Tongues. Amherst, NY: Cambria P, 2014.
Asian Diaspora and East-West Modernity. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2012.
Diaspora Literature and Visual Culture: Asia in Flight. London: Routledge, 2011.
East-West Montage: Reflections on Asian Bodies in Diaspora. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2007. (Nominated for the 2007 Association of Asian American Studies [AAAS] Book Award in Cultural Studies and for the Warren-Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Scholarship.)
The Deathly Embrace: Orientalism and Asian American Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. (Completed with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, 1997-98.)
Immigrant Subjectivities in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Literatures. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. 1998.
Co-editor with Catalina Florescu: Transnational Narratives in Englishes of Exile. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2017. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498539463/Transnational-Narratives-in-Englishes-of-Exile
Co-editor with Patricia Haseltine: Doing English in Asia: Global Literature and Culture. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2016. [Authored the “Preface,” 1-14]. https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739192016/Doing-English-in-Asia-Global-Literature-and-Culture
Co-editor with Graceia Lai, Hui-ling Wang, and Ju-fen Yu and translator: Chenmo de shanhen (Silent Scars: History of Sexual Slavery by the Japanese Military—A Pictorial Book, bilingual edition). Taipei: Shanzhou, 2005.
Co-editor with I-Chun Wang and Ya-hui Yang: 城市與海洋 (The City and the Ocean). Kaohsiung, Taiwan: Humanities Center, National Taiwan Sun Yat-sen University, 2011. [Authored the “Preface,” i-ii].
Sanshi zuoyou (Thirty, Left and Right, collection of Ma’s Chinese poetry) Taipei: Shulin, 1989.
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