Michele Janette

Professor / Graduate Faculty
Ph.D. 1997, Yale University

Email: mjanette@ksu.edu
Office: E/CS 131

Fields of interest:
20th Century American Literature; Asian American Literature; Feminism/Women's Studies; Cultural Studies; Film; Critical Theory.

Michele Janette specializes in Vietnamese American literature. Her wider interests and teaching areas include Asian American literature, contemporary American literature, cultural studies, film, and feminism. She has edited a collection of Vietnamese American writings (1962-2011) and produced an oral history documentary film about multicultural Kansas history and its preservation. Her articles include an articulation of the challenges to paradigms of rescue and refuge posed by Dao Strom's novel Grass Roof Tin Roof, an exploration of inducements to both responsibility and pleasure in Lily Hoang's Parabola; a case study of teaching Vietnamese-authored novels of the Vietnam war to a Midwestern, often US military-connected student population; examinations of identity, secrecy, and history in Monique Truong's Bitter in the Mouth; a recovery of No Passenger on the River as a foundational Vietnamese American text; surveys of Vietnamese American literature; an analysis of the way Tony Bui's film Three Seasons encourages viewers to look in new ways at Vietnam; an exploration of the irony in Lan Cao's Monkey Bridge as a guerrilla tactic; and a consideration of significant ghosts in the novels of Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong Kingston.