Amanda Weiss

Amanda Weiss is an Associate Professor of Japanese and Director of Graduate Studies at the School of Modern Languages, Georgia Institute of Technology. She specializes in East Asian media studies, focusing on film, anime, and cultural memory. Her research explores themes of gender, war remembrance, and transnational media narratives. Weiss leads the East Asian Media Vertically Integrated Project (VIP), fostering student research in media analysis, translation, and documentary production. She holds a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Tokyo, an M.Phil. from Cambridge University, and a B.A. in Film Production and Chinese from the University of Southern California.

Her notable works include the 2023 book Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema, and the textbook Learning Japanese through Anime Studies (in progress). Her journal articles critique militarized gender representations in contemporary anime and analyze transnational memory in Pan-Asian war films. Weiss also founded the speculative fiction magazine Hivemind: Global Speculative Fiction, emphasizing cross-cultural storytelling.

Her awards include a Fulbright Grant (2006-2007) for research in China. Weiss teaches courses on Japanese language, media, and cultural studies, including Anime: Culture & Society and Popular Culture in Japan. Her projects often intersect with sustainability, as seen in her analysis of nuclear resistance in Japanese communities and contributions to UN Sustainable Development Goals research.

• Education: PhD (University of Tokyo), M.Phil. (Cambridge University), B.A. (USC)
• VIP Projects: Student initiatives include documentary filmmaking, Japanese fantasy translations, and media analysis symposia
• Grants & Fellowships: Fulbright Grant, Emory University Postdoctoral Fellowship
• Labs/Teams: Leads the East Asian Media VIP and collaborates with the Global Media Fest