In 1981 Douglas Fix left Taiwan to study at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1993 received his PhD with a dissertation on the Taiwan literature of the 30s and 40s, a topic then seldom treated.
1981 年費德廉離開台灣前往加州大學柏克萊分校就讀，1993 年，費德廉以當時少見的 30-40 年代的台灣文學研究為主題，獲得該校頒發博士學位。