Southeast Asia Spotlight: Meet Catherine Nguyen
I’m Catherine and a Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University. My work focuses on the Vietnamese diaspora and Asian American literature. I am working on a monograph that is a comparative study of the Vietnamese mixed-race child and the adoptee from French colonial Indochina to the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Reading a range of literary works and cultural production in both English and French, it challenges the prevailing idea perpetuated by the narratives of France’s and the United States’ humanitarian charity that Vietnamese mixed-race children and adoptees are perpetually in need of rescue and salvation by focusing on the breakdown of hospitality and acts of hostility.
This semester I took to the opportunity to teach a History and Literature seminar on the Vietnam War. For the seminar, I wanted to recenter and focus on Vietnamese, Southeast Asian, and Asian American voices and narratives. The seminar therefore reads oral histories of Asian American veterans alongside those of the North and South Vietnamese forces as well as explores the wealth of literature and visual arts of Southeast Asian Americans and its diaspora. Part of this seminar is the mini speaker series “Refracting the Vietnam War: Critical Refugee Studies and Southeast Asian American Cultural Production” brings together early career scholars in critical refugee studies and Southeast Asian diasporic artists. Supplementing the seminar readings and activities, the series therefore opens from the seminar to invite all students and the Harvard community to engage directly with scholars and artists who are actively challenging the U.S.-dominant representation of the Vietnam War.
I would like to extend an invitation to join us for the mini speaker series “Refracting the Vietnam War: Critical Refugee Studies and Southeast Asian American Cultural Production” on Thursdays in March and April:
March 4th - Timothy K. August, “Of Boats and Bodies: Reading the Refugee Image” Lecture
https://tinyurl.com/refractvnwar1
March 18th - Antonius-Tin Bui, “upon skin, upon stone” Artist Presentation
https://tinyurl.com/refractvnwar2
April 1st - Krysada Phounsiri, “LAOMERICA, a Wandering Narrative” Poetry Reading
https://tinyurl.com/refractvnwar3
April 22nd - Ma Vang, “Hmong American Literature and Refugee Presence” Lecture
https://tinyurl.com/refractvnwar4