BU Humanists at Work: Meet Jennifer Cho
For Visiting Assistant Professor in English Jennifer Cho, writerly identity is not confined to paper, and social identity is never left behind at the doors to the classroom. The two identities are inseparable, both in Cho’s approach to teaching and in her research. This view of fundamentally interwoven identities lends itself to Cho’s examinations of contemporary Asian American literature and what literature can tell us about Asian American identity.
Cho’s work with contemporary Asian American literature focuses on the role of minority cultural production as both a disruptive and regenerative force. She points to the radical activist roots of the term Asian American, which originated with the 1968 Third World Liberation Front strikes, as a disruption of white-centered academe and white-centered narratives of the Asian American experience. Cho describes this disruption by contemporary authors as “an intentional response to how the model minority myth has imagined and even conditioned Asian Americans to be a submissive and socially abiding group.” Cho hopes to reexamine this myth through her exploration of Asian American narratives that focus on trauma and grief that arise from authors’ identification with a cultural minority.
“I see untapped possibility in studying Asian American literature, film, and culture because they offer counter narratives and memories to the ones that have been written,” said Cho–a sentiment echoed by recent pushes to expand inquiries into Asian American studies. Cho sees Asian American studies as a promising and necessary field of study in a time of xenophobia, and she emphasizes the role of Asian American stories as “a kind of creative resistance to those representations that recast Asian Americans as biological, economic, moral and/or geopolitical threats.”
Cho encourages her students to tap into this potential for resistance and expression in their own writing, noting that the writing process pulls us out of familiar spaces and challenges us to “revise preexisting knowledge about ourselves and our relationships with other people.” Writing, much like life, is not a linear process; Cho can certainly relate to this idea, as she took time after completing her PhD to train at the French Culinary Institute and work as a private chef and as a cook at Michelin-starred restaurants before returning to academia. Cho believes the skills of “practicing close reading, critical analysis, original intervention, and community discourse” are applicable beyond the classroom because they “enable us to decipher and respond to the social scripts that lend meaning to our lives.” Students in her classes experiment with a variety of writing techniques and styles, including visual mind mapping, collaborative literature reviews, posts on Padlet, and autoethnographic writing. One area where writerly identity and social identity are necessarily intertwined is in cross-cultural dialogue and the pursuit of social justice. For Cho, studying literature means asking “What does it mean to be human?” and exploring one’s identity within a larger social context is one way of answering that question.
This semester, Cho is teaching a section of the English Department’s Seminar in Literature entitled “Imaginings of Justice,” where students “encounter different communities that have been refused care and protection by the systems that have promised it to them as well as characters whose vulnerabilities have been exploited,” in works ranging from Colson Whitehead’s Nickel Boys to Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats. One assignment asks students to identify a personally-significant social justice issue; Cho says students will be “leading a presentation and discussion on their selected topic, inviting [them] to practice social advocacy” and explore both their writerly and social identities.
After teaching remotely for over a year, Cho is excited to be in the classroom in person, leading courses that are meaningful to her and inspiring to students. “I have been so energized by the openness, creativity, and vibrancy of the students in my classes,” she remarked, adding that this energy helped her adjust to her “disorienting and thrilling” cross-country move from Oakland, CA to Boston. Cho identified another pleasant surprise about Boston: “This might be strange to admit, but I am a winter convert after living ten snowless years in California.” She also enjoys exploring the food scene in Boston, proving that we all carry our past and current identities with us no matter where we go. For Cho, that means bringing all of her life experiences as a cook, scholar, professor, and Asian American woman into the classroom. She hopes her students are not afraid to do the same.