Sheng-mei Ma
mash@msu.edu
517-353-3764
C603 Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824
FacultyEnglishFilm Studies
Professor
Literary Studies; Film and Media Studies; Popular Culture; Race and Ethnic Studies; Global and Diasporic Studies
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, Ma 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: 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). His memoir is Immigrant Horse’s Mouth: Journey to the West by Bearing East. 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 (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. His current book project continues this trajectory in the study of Diaspora manifested in literature, film, and global culture.
Courses
ENG210: Introduction to the Study of English
ENG352: Asian American Writing
ENG360: Postcolonial and Diaspora Literature
ENG361: Asian Literature in English
ENG431A: Studies in Ethnic Film
ENG466: Literature of the Pacific Rim
ENG491H: Honors seminar
ENG823/991B: Seminar in Comparative Literary Criticism
ENG891/992G: Special Topics
IAH 204 Asia and the World
IAH 207 Literature, Cultures, and Identities
IAH 221C Great Ages Modern World
Publications
Immigrant Horse’s Mouth: Journey to the West by Bearing East. In“Made in Michigan Writers Series.” Wayne State University Press, 2023.
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.
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.
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.