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 an Associate Professor in the English and Communication Studies Department and coordinator of the Liberal Arts Asian Minor. 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. 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 presents extensively on her research, pedagogical innovation, translanguaging initiatives, and digital humanities at academic conferences. 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 TOESL.

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)

“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.

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/FI244 – Major Movements in Japanese, Chinese and Korean Film
• EN 281 – 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)