Bert Scruggs

Picture of Bert Scruggs
Associate Professor, East Asian Studies
School of Humanities
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
University of California, Irvine
Department of East Asian Studies
Mail Code: 6000
Irvine, CA 92697
Research Interests
Twentieth Century Chinese Fiction
Research Abstract
I am currently examining how authors represented the countryside in twentieth century Chinese fiction. In particular, I am looking closely at the xiangtu and seeking roots (xungen) movements.

Using language, literature, film, and translation as well as cultural, gendered, and spatial identification, I explored fiction written in Chinese and Japanese by Taiwanese authors in my first monograph, Translingual Narration: Colonial and Postcolonial Taiwanese Fiction and Film. In a nutshell, I examined previously overlooked or censored texts to explain the complexity of memory, postcolonial identity, and post-colonial translation in Taiwan during the twentieth century.
Publications
Monographs

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

Selected Journal Articles

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

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

Selected Translations

Han, Shaogong (韩少功). “Literature’s ‘Roots’” (文学的“根”). Chinese Literature and Thought Today, 58 (2027).

Wang, Zhenhe (王禎和). “The Mouse Serves a Guest Tea” (老鼠捧茶請人客). Taiwan Literature English Translation Series, 42 (2018).
Last updated
07/20/2026