Jean Amato, PhD

Education

BA, University of New Hampshire
MA, PhD, University of Oregon

2013-2014 State University of New York Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching
2015-2016 FIT Faculty Excellence Award

Biography

Jean Amato is a professor in the English and Communication Department, teaches and develops curricula in the Film and Media Department; and is the coordinator of the Liberal Arts Asian Minor at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. With a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon, Jean has also studied and conducted graduate research in Mainland China and Taiwan for over six years. With a PhD in Comparative Literature, Jean Amato has studied, taught, and conducted graduate research in Mainland China and Taiwan for over six years. Working in Chinese and English, her research centers on theories of nationalism, gender, and the ancestral home and homeland in Chinese, Diasporic, and Chinese American Literature and Film. She presents extensively on her research, pedagogical innovation, translanguaging initiatives, and digital humanities at academic conferences. Co-editor, of Home and Homeland in Asian Diaspora: Transnational Reflections in Art, Literature and Film (Palgrave 2024) and Multidisciplinary Representations of Home and Homeland in Diaspora (Routledge 2024).

She is currently co-editing (with comparative Art Historian Kyunghee Pyun) two interdisciplinary anthologies: Visualizing Home and Homeland in Asian Cinema: Public History and Private Memories (Amsterdam University Press) and Homemaking: A Spatial and Sensory Inquiry Across Disciplines (Brill). Her monograph in progress is on the representation of ancestral Home/Homeland in Chinese American and Diasporic Fiction (1940s-2020s). She publishes extensively on this topic. In 2014, she received the State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, and, in 2015, the FIT Faculty Excellence Award. She developed curriculum and taught in areas that include: Representation of Home and Ancestral Homeland in the Humanities, Asian American Literature and History, US Immigration Literature, Gender and Nationalism in World Literature, Migration and Diaspora Studies, Global Martial Arts Cinema, Contemporary Chinese; South Korean and East Asian Cinemas; Chinese and Taiwanese Literature, Homeland, Immigration and Postcolonial Studies in World Literature, Chinese Language, Composition, and ESL.

Research Interests

Amato's research interests in film and literature intersect with themes emphasized in her pedagogical development, namely the interplay of nationalism, gender, diaspora, transnational and homeland studies, Boys' Love, and LGBTQIA studies, with a special emphasis on Asian American and literature, Chinese and Taiwanese Cinema and literature, Global Martial Arts Cinema, along with OER, digital mapping, and translanguaging in the college classroom.

Select Publications

Co-editor, Home and Homeland in Asian Diaspora: Transnational Reflections in Art, Literature and Film. Eds. Jean Amato and Kyunghee Pyun. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Under Contract, Forthcoming 2023)

Co-editor, Multidisciplinary Representations of Home and Homeland in Diaspora. Eds. Jean Amato and Kyunghee Pyun. New York: Routledge (Under Contract, Forthcoming 2024)

Co-editor, Homemaking: A Spatial and Sensory Inquiry Across Disciplines. Eds. Jean Amato and Kyunghee Pyun. Brill. (Forthcoming 2025)

Co-editor, Visualizing Home and Homeland in Asian Cinema: Public History and Private Memories. Eds. Jean Amato and Kyunghee Pyun. Amsterdam University Press. (Forthcoming 2025).

"Introduction: Re/Making Our Homes: Domestic Space, Home, and the Ancestral Homeland in Diaspora." Multidisciplinary Representations of Home and Homeland in Diaspora. Eds. Jean Amato and Kyunghee Pyun. Routledge, 2024.

"Introduction: Interdisciplinary Expressions of Home and the Ancestral Homeland in Asian Diaspora." Co-authored with Kyunghee Pyun. Home and Homeland in Asian Diaspora: Transnational Reflections in Art, Literature and Film. Eds. Jean Amato and Kyunghee Pyun.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

"Conclusion: Homemaking: mapping the places, routines, memories, and locales we call home." Homemaking: A Spatial and Sensory Inquiry Across Disciplines. Eds. Jean Amato and Kyunghee Pyun. Studia Imagologica: Amsterdam Studies on Cultural Identity, Amsterdam and New York, Brill. (Forthcoming 2022).

"Spatio-Temporal Reterritorializing of Queer Urban Spaces and Bodies in Bai Xianyong's [白先勇]1983 Taipei novel Nei Zi 孽子 (Crystal Boys)." Time, the City, and the Literary Imagination. Eds. Anne-Marie Evans and Dr Kaley Kramer. Palgrave Macmillan Literary Urban Studies Series. 2021

"Ideological Mappings of Gendered Bodies, Nations and Spaces in Louis Chu's 1961 Chinatown Novel, Eat a Bowl of Tea." Seeing Whole: Toward an Ethics and Ecology of Sight. Eds. Mark Ledbetter and Asbjørn Grønstad. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar's Press, 2016. 19-48.

"Oxhide II [牛皮二] (2009), Chinese Filmmaker Liu Jiayin's new geography of the home." Spaces of the Cinematic House: Behind the Screen Door. Eds. Fran Pheasant-Kelly, Stella Hockenhull and Eleanor Andrews. New York: Routledge, 2015. 106-120.

"It All Depends on What You Mean by Home: Metaphors of Return in Chinese American Travel Memoirs from the 1980s to 2010s." CoHaB: Diasporic Constructions of Home and Belonging. ed. Florian Klager, Berlin, Boston: Walter De Gruyter, 2015, 427-446.

"Ideological Mappings of Gendered Bodies, Nations and Spaces in Louis Chu's 1961 Chinatown Novel, Eat a Bowl of Tea." Ecologies of Seeing. Eds Mark Ledbetter and Asbjørn Grønstad. Cambridge Scholar's Press (Forthcoming), 2016

"Relocating Notions of National and Ethnic Authenticity in Chinese American and Chinese Literary Theory through Nieh Hualing's Overseas Chinese Novel, Mulberry and Peach." Pacific Coast Philology XXXI V.1 (1999): 32-52.

"Helena Kuo." & "Mai-Mai Sze." Asian American Autobiographers: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook. ed. Guiyou Huang. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001. 187-91 & 345-49.

"Bette Bao Lord." "Helena Kuo." "Lin Tai-yi." & "Mai-Mai Sze." Asian American Novelists: a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook. ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. 211-13, 172-74, 360-64 & 357-59.

Conferences and Presentations

ACADEMIC CONFERENCES: PANEL ORGANIZER/CHAIR

Co-Organizer, Constructing Asian American Masculinities: Public Health and Cultural Studies Panel, Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Annual Convention, Hybrid/Long Beach, CA/Hybrid April 4-6, 2023

Organizer, Homelands and Home-making: Reimagining Domestic Space in Global Asias Panel. Global Asias Biennial Conferences G6, Verge: Studies in Global Asias . College of Liberal Arts, Penn State. State College, PA. March 30th - April 1, 2023

Discussant/co-organizer, Home, Hearth and Domestic Space in Japanese Cinema Panel, Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Convention. (Chair Kyunghee Pyun) Boston, MA/Hybrid. February 17-18, 2023

Chair/organizer, Visualizing Home and Homeland in Asian Cinema Panel, Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference. Boston, MA/Hybrid. February 17-18, 2023

Chair/Panel co-organizer, "Narrative Mapping for the Study of Home and Homeland in the Comparative Literature Classroom." The American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Convention. (Organizers: Jean Amato and Kyunghee Pyun) Hybrid, Annual Conference Taipei, Taiwan/Hybrid. June 15-18, 2022

Presiding Officer - Asian American Literature Panels I & II, Chair - Asian American Literature Panel I. 110th Annual Conference of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Convention. Seattle, WA. October 2012

Panel Organizer, "Asian American Literature: Questions of National and Ethnic Belonging in Asian American and Asian Diasporic Texts and Films." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Convention. Portland State University, Portland, OR. November 1999

ACADEMIC CONFERENCES: PRESENTATIONS

"Translanguaging in the Digital Humanities: Fostering an Organic, Collaborative, Multi-lingual, Cross-Cultural, and Pluralistic Discourse Community in a Global Martial Arts Cinema Classroom." Pedagogy and Popular Culture Panel, 45th Annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference (SWPACA). Albuquerque, New Mexico. February 21-24, 2024.

"Transnational Forms: Swordplay, Assassins, Wandering Ronin and Cowboys." Influence of American Cowboy Culture on Asia Panel, Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Convention. Seattle, WA/Hybrid. Virtual March 1, 2024.

"‘Now Home was Half a Dozen Other Places Across the Seas': Mai-Mai Sze's Anti-Nostalgic Narratives of the 1940s Chinese Diaspora." Chinese Diaspora Panel, Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (SWCAS), University of Houston, Houston/Hybrid, November 3-4, 2023.

"Hegemonic Masculinities and Homeless Desires in Anor Lin's [ Lin Tai Yi 林太乙] 1958 Chinese American Novel of East/West Migrations, The Eavesdropper." Constructing Asian American Masculinities: Public Health and Cultural Studies Panel, Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Annual Convention, Hybrid/Long Beach, CA/Hybrid April 4-6, 2023.

"Taiwan's Military Dependents' 眷村 Village: Domestic Melodrama, Patriarchy, Voyeurism, and Queer Desire in Yu Kan-ping's 虞戡平 films: Nieh-Tzu [孽子] (1987) and Papa Can You Hear Me Sing 搭錯車 1983. Homelands and Homemaking: Reimagining Domestic Space in Global Asias. Global Asias Biennial Conferences G6, Verge: Studies in Global Asias . College of Liberal Arts, Penn State. State College, PA. March 30th - April 1, 2023.

"Mapping Dānměi 耽美 Portrayals Across Multiple Taiwanese Genres From 1990s to the 2010s: Queer Intimacy, Spectacle, and Voyeurism in Popular Culture." Seminar on BL: Queer Vernaculars in World Literature, The American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Convention. Chicago, Illinois, March 16-19, 2023.

"Android Spectacles and Censoring Queer Desire: Placing Deng Ke's 邓科2017 Science Fiction Comedy Series, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend 我女朋友的男朋友, in the Context of the PRC's 2016 Screen Ban on Portrayals of Homosexuality." Asian Popular Culture Panel. 44th Annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference (SWPACA). Albuquerque, New Mexico. February 22-25, 2023

"Embodying History with Chen Zhen [陈真]: Nationalism, Resistance, Masculinity, and the Male Body in Four Adaptations of Bruce Lee's 1972 film, Fist of Fury [精武門]; starring Jackie Chan (1976), Jet Li (1994), and Donnie Yen (2010). Imagining the Asian Past: Narratives and Themes in Multimedia Panel. Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Convention.Boston, MA/Hybrid. February 17-18, 2023.

"Fostering Organic Linguistic Inclusivity in the Classroom." (Co-presenting with Nurhayat Bilge). "But if I Don't Teach Standard English, My Students Won't Get a Job": Liberating Community Colleges from Linguistic Discrimination and Promoting Linguistic Justice Panel. National Communication Association (NCA) 108th Annual Convention. "Honoring PLACE: People, Liberation, Advocacy, Community, and Environment." New Orleans. November 17-22, 2022.

"Introducing Digital Humanities and OER Tools and Models for Local and Global Narrative Mapping for Use in the Online Classroom." National Distance Learning Week Conference, Online SUNY. November 7-11, 2022.

"Encouraging Collaborative Global Discourse and Translanguaging Research Practices in Online Literature and Film Studies Classes." Sustaining the Momentum: Building on What We've Learned, State University of New York (SUNY) Annual Conference on Instruction & Technology. [Virtually presented COVID-19] Oswego, NY. May 31-June 3, 2022.

"Public and Private Renegotiations in a "Return" Journey to an Ancestral Home and Homeland in Yi-Fu Tuan's Coming Home to China (2007)." Representation of Home and Ancestral Homeland in Asian American Literature and Art Panel, Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Annual Convention. [Virtually presented COVID-19] April 14-16, 2022.

"Global Martial Arts Cinema Classroom as an Organic, Collaborative, Student-centered, and Pluralistic Discourse Community" Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Convention. Hybrid/Honolulu, Hawaii. March 24-27, 2022.

"Translanguaging: Encouraging Global Research and Using First Languages Sources in the

College Classroom to Achieve Equity, Inclusion, and Multilingualism." Language and Literature Program Innovation Room, Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention. Washington D.C. [Virtually presented COVID-19] January 6-9, 2022.

"Diverging Narratives of the Ancestral Home/Homeland in Maxine Hong Kingston's Memoir I Love a Broad Margin to My Life (2011)" Literary Border-Crossings Panel. American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Convention. Georgetown University. Washington, DC. March 7-10, 2019.

"Physical and Conceptual Ideas of Home through Traveling Bodies, Spaces, Times, and Mixed Geographies:Yi-Fu Tuan's Coming Home to China (2007)." Mobility and Space in Global Asia Panel, Global Asias 4 Biennial Annual Conference. Verge: Studies in Global Asias . College of Liberal Arts, Penn State. State College, PA. March 31st - April 1, 2017.

"Maternal Custodians of the Ancestral Home in 1960s Chinese American Fiction." Matrilineal Textual Body: Maternal Bodies in Asian American Lit and Pop Culture as Text Panel, Annual Conference of the Northeast American Modern Language Association (NEMLA) Annual Convention. Baltimore, MD. March 24-26, 2017.

"Amy Tan's Narrative Reappropriation of Mainland China as a "Chinascape" in The Hundred Secret Senses (1995)." East West Literary Relations Panel, Annual Conference of the Pacific American Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Convention. Pasadena, CA. November 11-13, 2016.

"Interrogating the Story of Ourselves Through Traveling Bodies, Spaces, Homes, and Mixed Geographies: Yi-Fu Tuan's memoir Coming Home to China (2007)" Architecture, Space, and Literature Panel, Annual Conference of the Pacific American Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Convention in Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. November 6-8, 2015.

"Queer Space, Adaptations of the 1983 Novel Nieh Tzu, Yu Kan Ping's 1987 film and Cao Ruiyuan's 2003 Miniseries." Constructing the self, constructing the city: body, identity, gender in contemporary literature and cinema seminar. American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Convention. New York University, NY. March 20-23, 2014.

"It All Depends on What You Mean by Home: representing the ancestral home or homeland in contemporary Chinese American women's travel memoirs." International Conference ITN CoHaB, Diasporic Constructions of Home and Belonging. Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, Germany. September 22-25, 2013.

"The bishonen [beautiful boy] trope in Chen Yin-jung's 2004 Taiwanese blockbuster film, Formula 17 [17歲的天空]." Eighth International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) Annual Conference: East-West Crossroads. Macau, P.R.C. June 24-27, 2013.

"Homeless Patriotism in Anor Lin's (Lin Tai Yi) 1958 Chinese American novel of East/West migrations The Eavesdropper ." Migration, Immigration, and Movement in Asian Studies Panel 110th Annual Conference of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Convention. Seattle, WA. October 2012.

"Oxhide II [ 牛皮二 ] (2009), Chinese Filmmaker Liu Jiayin's new geography of the home." 6th Nomadikon Conference: "Ecologies of Seeing or Seeing Whole: Images and Space, Images within Images." Albany, NY. September 2012.

"The Sentimental Journey: metaphorical notions of return to an ancestral home or homeland in Contemporary Chinese American literature." International Conference at the Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences, National Sun Yat-sen University. Taiwan. ROC. November 2011.

"‘For Our Nation I Forgot My Home.' Bi-directional Overseas Chinese Nationalism in Chen Ruoxi's [陳若曦] 1970s Chinese Language Fiction from the USA." Asian American Literature Panel. Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Convention. Claremont, CA. November 2011.

"This Film is Not Merely About Two Men": U.S. student perceptions of what defines "gay" Chinese Cinema. Co-Authored with Stanley Solomon. Joint Annual Meeting of Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (ASPAC) & Western Conference of the Association of Asian Studies (WCAAS). Los Angeles, CA. June 2011.

"Writing, Diversity and Cultural Exchange in the Classroom/ Integrating ESL Learners in the Classroom Through the Heirloom Recipe Exchange Project." Heirlooms and Relics. College English Association (CEA) National Conference . St. Petersburg, Florida. March 2011.

"The Transnational Relationship between Private Longing and Public Belonging in Virginia Chin-lan Lee's, The House That Tai Ming Built (1963) . " Asian American Literature: Intertextuality and Doubling: Designing Relationships. College English Association (CEA) National Conference . Pittsburg, PA. March 2009.

"Patriotic Ardor: Gendered Narratives of Overseas Chinese Patriotism and Desire in 1940's Fictional Depictions of the Sino-Japanese War by Chinese American Women Writers: Adet Lin and Helena Kuo. American Literature and War, College English Association (CEA) National Conference . St. Louis, Missouri. March 2008.

"Migrations of a Traditional Chinese Nei/Wai [Inner/Outer] Spatial Ideology: the gendered representation of public/private spaces and bodies in Louis Chu's Chinatown novel, Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961)." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association(PAMLA) Annual Convention. Western Washington University. Bellingham, Washington. November 2007.

"Migrations of a Traditional Chinese Nei/Wai [Inner/Outer] Spatial Ideology: the gendered representation of public/private spaces and bodies in Louis Chu's Chinatown novel, Eat a Bowl of Tea (1961)." Texas Tech Comparative Literature Symposium on "America's Asia, Asia's America." Texas Tech University. Lubbock, Texas. April 2007.

"Marginalized Kingdoms in Crystal Boys ( Nie Zi ) by Pai Hsien-yung and Red Azalea by Anchee Min." University of Southern California, Fifth Annual National Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Graduate Student Conference: Queer Frontiers.University of Southern California. University Park, Los Angeles, CA. March 1999.

"Cracks in the Model of Compulsory Heterosexuality: representation of queer space and spectacle in Pai Hsien-yung's overseas Chinese novel Crystal Boys (Nieh Tzu) and Outsiders , its filmic adaptation by Yu Kan-Ping." Modern Language Association(MLA) Annual Convention. San Francisco, CA. December 1998.

"The Dis-locating and Re-locating Effects of Diaspora on Notions of National and Ethnic Authenticity in Chinese American Literary Theory ." Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Annual Meeting, Scripps College. Claremont, CA. November 1998.

"The Intersection of Nationalism and Desire in Nieh Hua Ling's Overseas Chinese Novel Mulberry and Peach ." Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (ASPAC) Annual Conference. Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington. June 1998.

"Sexuality as Resistance to Dominant Discourse in Two Works of Chinese Literature." Ninth Annual Graduate Student Cultural Studies Conference. University of California at Santa Cruz. April 1995.

"Marginalized Kingdoms in Two Works of Chinese/Taiwanese Literature." Gender Studies Symposium. "Gender Issues in Literature." Lewis and Clark College. Portland Oregon. April 1995.

Awards

• Exemplary SUNY Online Educator Award, 2023
• Certificate of Effective Teaching Practice Award, SUNY Lumen Circles Fellowship, Fall 2022
• FIT Faculty Excellence Award, 2016
• Co-organizer, FIT's Film and Media Screening Series, Diversity Grant Award, FIT, SUNY, 2015-2016, 2017
• State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2014
• FIT Sabbatical leave awarded for Spring 2014
• Co-organizer, FIT's Heirloom Recipes: A Cross-Cultural Exchange, Diversity Grant Award, FIT, SUNY. Fall 2009-Spring 2010
• FIT Student Faculty Corporation Award, Language Exchange Program, Co-organizer FIT, SUNY. 2010-2011; Ongoing Asian Film Series Co-organizer. 2009 & 2010
• FIT Center for Excellence in Teaching Travel Grants, FIT, SUNY (2011 to present)
• Special Achievement as Outstanding Graduate Teaching Fellow, Graduate School, University of Oregon. Spring 2002
• Graduate Teaching Fellowships: Program in Comparative Literature (1999-2002); English Department, (1994-1997) & Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (1997-1999). University of Oregon.
• Annual Best Graduate Paper Award, Center for Asian and Pacific Studies. University of Oregon. 1998
• Best in Conference Panel Award, Asian American Literature: Disrupting Wholeness in Body, Narrative, and Nation. Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA). Scripps College, Claremont, CA. 1998
• Awarded Distinction in Ph.D. field exam: Asian American Literature: Gender, Nationalism, and Identity Politics. Alan Wolfe, East Asian Languages and Literatures. University of Oregon. Spring 1997
• Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies Fellowship, in Taipei, Taiwan, Administered by Stanford University, 1996.
• Graduate International Fellowship, National Security Education Program, 1995-1996.

Courses

• EN 121 Composition
• EN 204 Contemporary US Immigrant Literature: Border Crossings and Migrations
• EN 230/FI 204 Martial Arts Cinema and Its Global Impact
• EN 231 Short Fiction
• EN 232 Perspectives on American Literature
• EN 236 Major Writers of the Western World
• EN 257/FI 244 Major Movements in Japanese, Chinese and Korean Film
• EN 281/FI 245 Chinese Cinema
• EN 302 Gender and Nationalism in World Fiction (Honors)
• EN 333 Modern Literature: The Spirit of the Twentieth Century
• EN 338 Introduction to Asian American History and Literature
• EN 371 Chinese Odyssey: Introduction to Chinese Literature
• EN 381 Asian Literature: Regional Selections (Honors)
• EN 382/FI 343 Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Honors)
• FI 342 Contemporary Korean Cinema

Connect

Jean Amato on LinkedIn