Jennifer Ho

Associate Professor, Department of English

My research and teaching interests are in Asian American, Multiethnic American and Contemporary American literature. In particular, I am interested in the construction of contemporary American identities-their articulation and representation in literature, film, and popular culture. My first book, Consumption and Identity in Asian American Coming-of-Age Novels (Routledge Press, 2005), examines the intersection of coming-of-age, ethnic identity formation, and foodways in late 20th Century Asian American bildungsromane and American popular culture. My current book manuscript, Telling Stories, Making Knowledge: Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture, examines the theme of racial ambiguity in various modes of cultural production (oral history, new media, literature, film, sports journalism) created predominantly by and about Asian Americans in the late-20th century. The central claim of this book argues that all Asian American subjects (in the sense of both people and objects of inquiry) are ambiguous and that Asian American culture produces ambiguity as a form resistance to normative understandings of racial formation. And projecting ahead, I have two future research projects in mind. The first will focus on gossip and the ways in which various communities of women in the U.S. have used gossip as productive modes of communication, affiliation, and empowerment, and the second looks at multiple migrations of Asians, particularly focusing on the Asian Caribbean diaspora.

PhD: Boston University, 2003
MA: Boston University, 1996
BA: University of California at Santa Barbara, 1992

442 Greenlaw Hall
office phone: 962-8478 jho@email.unc.edu
Curriculum Vitae