Jinting Wu

Jinting Wu is Assistant Professor of Educational Culture, Policy and Society. She is an educational anthropologist with an interest in philosophy and cultural studies. Her research often deploys ethnographic field methods to critically investigate relationships among schooling, society, and culture; it also examines educational policy shifts both as lived experiences and as reflecting the larger spheres of cultural ideation, social (re)production, nation building and globalization. Recent projects have involved study of rural minority education, child disabilities and special education, immigrant youth and families, and educational meritocracy on the global stage. Prior to joining the GSE faculty, she worked as Assistant Professor at the University of Macau (SAR, China) and was a postdoctoral fellow of educational sciences at the University of Luxembourg.

• PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Educational Policy Studies; Curriculum & Instruction
• MEd, Boston University, International Development Education
• BA, Shanghai International Studies University, English Language and Literature

• Henry Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowship in China Studies; Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies; 2020-03-30;
• The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy Research Grant “Disability Segregation in an Age of Inclusion: Navigating Educational Pathways through Special Education Schools in Contemporary China.”; University at Buffalo; 2019-05-21;
• 2018 Asian Studies Program Small Research Award, “Special Pupils in Special Schools: Disability, Education, and the Making of Inequality in Contemporary China.”; University at Buffalo; 2018-03-08;
• 2018 Early Career Award; Critical Issues in Curriculum and Cultural Studies Special Interest Group, American Educational Research Association; 2018-02-28;
• 2017 Outstanding Book Award; Society of Professors of Education; 2017-03-31;
• 2017 Outstanding Book Recognition Award; American Educational Research Association, Division B; 2017-03-16;
• 2017 Gender Institute Faculty Research Grant “Mothering Special Children: Negotiating Gender and Disability in China’s Special Schools.”; University at Buffalo; 2017-02-01;
• 2013 Gail P. Kelly Outstanding Dissertation Award in Comparative Education; Comparative and International Education Society; 2013-02-03;

• Disability Segregation in an Age of Inclusion: Navigating Educational Pathways through Special Education Schools in Contemporary China; Local; Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy; Awarded; (06/01/2019-12/31/2020)

• Richardson, J.G., Wu, J. & Judge, D. (2017). The Global Convergence of Vocational and Special Education: Mass Schooling and Modern Educability. New York: Routledge.
• Wu, Jinting. (2016). Fabricating an Educational Miracle: Compulsory Schooling Meets Ethnic Rural Development in Southwest China. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

• Wu, Jinting. (2020). Mothering Special Children: Negotiating Gender, Disability, and Special Education in Contemporary China. Harvard Educational Review, 90(1): 26-48.
• Wu, Jinting. (2019). Transnational Strategies and Lifelong Learning in the Shadow of Citizenship: Chinese Migrants in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 38(1): 88-102.
• Wu, J. (2018). Performing the Nation, Performing the Market: Hybrid Practices and Negotiated Meanings of Chinese Rural Teachers. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 49 (4): 428-443.
• Wu, J. (2018, online first). Confucian Revival and the Hybrid Educational Narratives in Contemporary China: A Critical Rethinking of Scale in Globalisation and Education. Globalisation, Societies and Education.
• Wu, J., Eaton, P., Robinson-Morris, D., Wallace, M.F.G. & Han. S. (2018). Perturbing Possibilities in the Post Qualitative Turn: Lessons from Taoism and Ubuntu. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 31 (6): 504-519.
• Wu, Jinting. (2017). Ethnic Tourism and the Big Song: Public Pedagogies and the Ambiguity of Environmental Discourse in Southwest China. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49 (5): 480-500.
• Wu, J. (2016). Good Intentions Gone Awry: Education Policy and Paradox of Consequences in Rural Ethnic China. Journal of Educational Controversy, 11(1). Retrieved from http://cedar.wwu.edu/jec/vol11/iss1/4
• Wu, J. & Vong, S-K. (2016). Macau Higher Education Expansion in Flux: A Critical Spatial Perspective. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. Online first. DOI:10.1080/01596306.2016.1149152
• Wu, J. & Wenning, M. (2016). The Postsecular Turn in Education: Lessons from the Mindfulness Movement and the Revival of Confucian Academies. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 35:551-571.
• Wu, Jinting. (2016). Educational Discipline, Ritual Governing, and Chinese Exemplary Society: Why China’s Curriculum Reform Remains a Difficult Task? Policy Futures in Education, 14(6): 721-740.
• Zhou, Y. & Wu, J. (2016). The Game Plan: Four Contradictions in the Development of World Class Universities from the Global South. Education and Science, 41 (184): 75-89.
• Wu, Jinting. (2013). Towards a Curriculum of Vulnerability and Blandness: Insights from Levinas and Classical Chinese Thoughts. Journal of Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 10 (2): 49-63.
• Wu, Jinting. (2012). Disenchantment and Participatory Limits of Compulsory Education: Lessons from Southwest China. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 42 (4): 621-645.
• Wu, Jinting. (2012). Governing Suzhi and Curriculum Reform in Rural Ethnic China: Viewpoints From the Miao and Dong Communities in Qiandongnan. Curriculum Inquiry, 42 (5): 652-681.
• Wu, Jinting. (2012). A Sermon as Counter Sermon on Educational Research. International Journal for the Historiography of Education. vol. 2:102-105.
• Wu, Jinting. (2012). Performativity in China’s Ethnic Borderlands: Ethnographic Fragments in a Rural Miao Community. The Michigan Journal of Asian Studies, 1 (2): 79-88.

• Wu, Jinting. (2018). Erasure and Renewal in (Post)socialist China: My Mother’s Long Journey. In Childhood and Schooling in (Post)Socialist Societies: Memories of Everyday Life. Eds. Iveta Silova, Nelli Piattoeva, and Zsuzsa Millei, pp. 205-230. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
• Wu, Jinting. (2018). The Uneven Work of Sustainability: Schooling, Tourism, and Rural Development in Southwest China. In Routledge International Handbook of Schools and Schooling in Asia, pp.693-708. Eds. Kerry J. Kennedy and John Chi-Kin Lee. New York: Routledge.
• Wu, Jinting. (2016). Ambivalent “Quality” and the Educational Sublime: Compulsory Schooling Meets Rural Development in Southwest China. In Spotlight on China: Changes in Education under China’s Market Economy, eds. Guo, Shibao & Guo, Yan, pp. 67-84. Sense Publishers.
• Konkol, P. & Wu, J. (2015). Curriculum and the Policy Milieu. In The Sage Guide to Curriculum in Education. Eds. Ming Fang He, Brian D. Schultz, and William H. Schubert, pp. 319-325. Sage Publications.
• Wu, Jinting. (2015). Contesting Isomorphism and Divergence: Historicizing Chinese Educational Encounter with the West. In Daniel Tröhler & Thomas Lenz (eds.), Trajectories in the Development of Modern School Systems: Between the National and the Global, pp. 256-268. New York: Routledge. [Spanish translation published by Octaedro Editorial under the title Trayectorias del Desarrollo de los Sistemas Educativos Modernos: Entre lo Nacional y lo Global]

• Wu, J. (July 2019). “Chinese Education System: Meritocracy, Hybridity, Social Inequality.” Presented at the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA) Seminar for Teachers. Confucius Institute, University at Buffalo.;
• Wu, J. (June 2020). “Mothering Special Children: Negotiating Gender, Disability, and Special Education in Contemporary China.” Invited Presentation at Harvard-Yenching Education Workshop on “Unequal Childhoods in China: Youth Schooling and the Intersectionality of Gender, Class, and Ethnicity.” Yenching Institute, Harvard University.;
• Wu, J. (November 2019). “Mothering Special Children: Negotiating Gender, Disability, and Special Education in Contemporary China.” Asia@Noon Lecture, Asian Studies Program, University at Buffalo.;
• Wu, J. (Oct. 2018). “A Hierarchy of Aspirations Within a Field of Educational Possibilities: The Futures of Chinese Immigrant Youth in Luxembourg.” Presented at the Asia-Pacific Talent and Knowledge Mobilities Symposium, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.;
• Wu, J. (February 2018). Invited discussion (via video conference) on my book Fabricating an Educational Miracle (SUNY Press, 2016) with Dr. Bradley Levinson’s Anthropology of Education class, Indiana University Bloomington.;
• Wu, J. (September 2017). Invited panelist, “Discussing Comics and the Notions of the Human.” Post Foundational Approaches to CIES Special Interest Group, 1st 2017-18 Webinar Series, Comparative and International Education Society.;
• Wu, J. (June 2017). "Performing the Nation, Performing the Market: Village Teachers at the Interstices." Presented at the Sociology Salon, School of Educational Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, China. In Chinese.;
• Wu, J. (March 2017). Invited panelist, “Expert Panel & Workshops on Academic Writing and Publishing with an International Perspective.” Curriculum and Instruction International Student Association, University of Wisconsin-Madison.;
• Wu, J. (July 2015). “The Politics of Compulsory Education: Universal Ideals and Local Disenchantment in Southwest China.” Presented at the Universities Service Center for China Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong.;
• Wu, J. (April 2014). “Tourism as Spatial Pedagogy in Rural Ethnic China." Presented at the Colloquium Series on Curriculum Studies, Teachers College, Columbia University.;

• Wu, J. (November 2019). “Navigating the Educational Pathway: Intergenerational Dynamics and Transcultural Negotiations of Immigrant Chinese in Luxembourg.” Paper accepted by the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Canada. (Unable to attend due to pregnancy travel restrictions).;
• Wu, J. (April 2019). “Good Intensions Gone Awry: Education Policy and Paradox of Consequences in Rural Ethnic China.” Presented as part of the creative roundtable “The Unintended Consequences of Historical ‘Best Practices’ in ‘Post-Truth’ Times: A National and International Perspective.” American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada.;
• Wu, J. (Oct. 2018). “Transnational Strategies in the Shadow of Citizenship: Chinese Migrants in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.” The 25th Biennial Canadian Ethnic Studies Association Conference: Immigration, Ethnic Mobilities, and Diasporic Communities in a Transnational World. Banff, Alberta, Canada.;
• Wu, J. (April 2018). "Erasure and Renewal in (Post) Socialist China: My Mother’s Long Journey.” Presented as part of the Symposium “Towards Decolonizing Childhood: Researching Memories of Everyday Life in (Post)Socialist Societies.” American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New York City, U.S.A.;
• Wu, J. (November 2017). "Mothering Special Children: Negotiating Gender and Disability in China’s Special Education." Paper presented at American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.;
• Wu, J. (March 2017). "Between the Global and the National: Confucian Revival and the Hybrid Educational Narratives in Contemporary China." Paper presented at the Comparative and International Education Society Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA.;
• Wu, J. (November 2016). "Rural Teachers and Performativity of Education Policies in Southwest China." Paper presented at American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN.;

• I joined the editorial board of the International Studies in Sociology of Education
  09/12/2017-

• I served on the Outstanding Book Award Committee, Division B, American Educational Research Association
  11/01/2017-03/01/2018
• I served as an invited panelist for the Webinar Series “Discussing Comics and the Notions of the Human,” Post Foundational Approaches to CIES Special Interest Group, Comparative and International Education Society. The panel was held as a conversation with Dr. Elizabeth De Freitas (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr. Daniel Friedrich (Teachers College, Columbia University), Dr. Jinting Wu (University at Buffalo), and Dr. Susanne Ress (Humboldt University of Berlin).
  09/29/2017-