The daughter of a refugee father from China and an immigrant mother from Jamaica, whose parents themselves were immigrants from Hong Kong, Jennifer Ho (she/her) is the director of the Center for Humanities & the Arts and Professor of Ethnic Studies, where she teaches courses on Asian American culture and Critical Race Theory. She is past president of the Association for Asian American Studies (2020-2022) and the author of two co-edited essay collections--Teaching Approaches to Asian North American Literature (MLA Press 2022 w/Jenny Wills),Narrative, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States (Ohio State University Press 2017 w/Jim Donahue & Shaun Morgan)--and three scholarly monographs, Consumption and Identity in Asian American Coming-of-Age Novels (Routledge 2005), Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture (Rutgers University Press 2015), which won the South Atlantic Modern Language Association award for best monograph, and Understanding Gish Jen (University of South Carolina Press 2015). In addition to her academic work, Ho is active in community engagement around issues of race and intersectionality, leading workshops on anti-racism and how to talk about race in our current political climate.
Dr. Ho's Project
Jennifer will be holding a conversation or dialogue with the participants of the Jews of Color: Histories and Futures Luce Grant on the intersections and overlaps between Anti-Semitism and Racism. Particularly from a US perspective, there’s distinct ways in which the conversation has stalled out because of the seeming “whiteness” of who Jewish people are perceived to be—and the very real white privilege that white Jewish people have in the US. While Anti-Semitism and Systemic Racism have distinct histories and realities as far as how individual people experience these oppressions, the roots of both in the US can be traced to white supremacy, which is an ideology that needs to be better explained and understood in order to account for ways to intervene in both Anti-Semitism and Racism. Being able to talk openly, honestly, and directly about the tensions surrounding both Anti-Semitism and Racism are needed to combat the roots of white supremacy.”