Vietnam Studies Group meeting, March 1999

40-50 AAS members attended the VSG meeting at the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies on March 12, 1999, despite the fact that the meeting was held at 9:00 p.m. in order to accommodate at the last minute the Southeast Asian Council reception.

I would like to report on the following issues (not in the order of discussion at the 1999 VSG meeting)

I. AAS meetings

For the 1999 meetings, most of the Southeast Asia panel proposals were accepted by the program committee. Jayne Werner, Brantly Womack, and Michelle Thompson received thanks at the VSG meeting for organizing intellectually stimulating panels at the 1999 meeting.

The 2000 AAS meetings will be held from March 9-12, 2000 in San Diego, California. For the 2000 AAS meetings, besides regular panels for which the deadline is around August 1, 1999, AAS has launched a new type of BORDER-CROSSING sessions, sessions that cross borders--disciplinary, national, regional, historical periods--in subject matters as well as participants. If you propose a session to be enriched by a participant from another regional specialty (e.g., Latin America), another discipline, or another country (say, in Europe or Asia), you may request Border-Crossing fund to facilitate the participation of a scholar not normally attending AAS meetings. Border-crossing session proposals should be thematically, disciplinarily, and geographically expansive, and should involve novel formats. THE DEADLINE FOR BORDER-CROSSING SESSION PROPOSALS IS MAY 1, 1999. Inquiries should be directed to Suzanne W. Barnett, program committee chair for the 2000 AAS meetings, at sbarnett@ups.edu or (253) 756-3168 (telephone).

The Southeast Asia Council will sponsor two big sessions:

Subaltern Studies in Southeast Asia (to be submitted as a Border-Crossing session); and in order to examine the linkage between Southeast Asian Studies and Asian American Studies, a session focusing on diaspora and transnationalism (S.E. Asia focus). The Philippines Studies and Vietnam Studies Groups are asked to organize the second SEAC session. Shawn McHale <mchale@gwu.edu> and Judith Henchy <judithh@u.washington.edu> have volunteered to work with the PSG to organize this session. I would strongly encourage you to contact Shawn or Judith at your earliest convenience if you are interested in presenting a paper on this panel.

VSG members at the meeting also proposed other possible panels on Vietnam at the 2000 AAS meetings:

2. Politics of Archaeology (Steve O'Harrow as key contact nominated at VSG meeting sog@hawaii.edu)

3. Regions and Regional Identities (Hue-Tam Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>)

4. State and Society <Helen Chauncy <vrc@uvic.ca>

If you have other ideas, you can contact VSG members directly, or let me know for a report to VSG membership within the next 4-6 weeks.

II. Information Flow on Vietnamese Studies

VSG members at the meeting proposed the following steps to improve information flow on Vietnamese Studies, especially for those with interest on Vietnam but affiliated with institutions without significant resources on Vietnam:

1. A list serve of addresses on scholars working on Vietnam

2. A directory with more up-to-date information on academic research on Vietnam. Towards this purpose, I will send you a form right after this message. PLEASE FILL OUT THE FORM, and return it to Judith Henchy <judithh@u.washington.edu> who has kindly agreed to supervise a student to update the current VSG membership list at the VSG website.

VSG members at the meeting also agreed to allocate VSG funds to Judith Henchy so that she can hire a student at the U. Washington to assist her in improving the information flow through the VSG Website.

The VSG also greatly appreciated the work of Edith Shillue and the Joiner Center at U. Massachusetts at Boston in publishing issues of Vietnam Studies Bulletin on a regular basis.

III. VSG Membership Dues

Hue-Tam Tai mentioned that the VSG had not collected membership fees for a long time (except from a few members). Hue-Tam Tai moved that VSG members paid an annual membership fee of US $10 to improve VSG finances (partly in order to improve information flow). The motion was accepted. Six members handed checks right at the VSG meeting. For others, PLEASE SEND YOUR MEMBERSHIP FEE TO ME, if not yet done in the last few months:

Hy V. Luong

Department of Anthropology

Sidney Smith Hall 1039

University of Toronto

Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 3G3.

Once receiving your check and recording it, I will send it to the Association for Asian Studies for deposit into the VSG account there. For those of you in the U.S., sending it to me means adding a few cents of postage (for mail to Canada). But if a VSG Executive Committee member in the U.S. volunteers to collect the checks and to record them, it may save each VSG member a few additional cents of postage.

III. International Dimension of Vietnamese Studies

1. I reported on Prof. Phan Huy Le's efforts to establish a provisional organizing committee as a step towards an International Association of Vietnamese Studies. In the initial proposal from Vietnam, there would be five members from outside Vietnam (including one from N. America), who will make up half of the provisional committee membership.

I reported on a proposal from the VSG Exec. Committee to Prof. Phan Huy Le in January 1999 that the number of Vietnam scholars from outside Vietnam on the provisional committee should be increased to more than 5 to reflect the international nature of a future association. This proposal is being actively and sympathetically considered.

2. I also reported on a new fellowship program funded by the Ford Foundation and administered by American Council of Learned Societies in collaboration with the Social Science Research Council and the Center for Educational Exchange with Vietnam. This fellowship program is for Vietnamese social scientists (in anthropology and sociology) to pursue Master degrees in other countries (Asia, North America, Europe, or Australia) or to undertake a well-focused 6-month research/study at an accredited foreign university. Eligible are Vietnamese nationals who are teaching and research staff from, or who, after successful completion of an MA study, will be employed by:

- College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Department of Sociology or Anthropology

- College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Department of Sociology or Anthropology

- Ho Chi Minh City Open University, Women's Studies Department.

- Institute of Sociology, NCSSH, Hanoi

- Institute of Ethnology, NCSSH, Hanoi

- Institute of Folk Culture Studies, NCSSH, Hanoi

- Center for Family and Women's Studies, NCSSH, Hanoi

- Institute of Social Sciences in Ho Chi Minh City, NCSSH,

- Ho Chi Minh Political Academy, Department of Sociology

For the first annual competition, the nomination deadline was

December 31, 1998.

IV. VSG Executive Committee

The terms of Keith Taylor, Peter Zinoman, and Shaun Malarney on the VSG Executive Committee expired at the AAS meeting in 1999. Ann Marie Leshkowich (Anthropology, Harvard U.) was nominated and elected, while the nomination of some other scholars not at the VSG meeting ran into procedural difficulties. The current members of the VSG Executive Committee are:

Hy V. Luong (Anthropology, U. Toronto), Chair (term ending 2001)

Hue-Tam Ho Tai (History, Harvard U., term ends 2001)

Christoph Giebel (History, U. Washington, term ends 2001)

Irene Norlund (Economic History, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, term ends 2001)

Helen Chauncy (History, U. Victoria, term ends 2001)

Shawn McHale (History, George Washington U., term ends 2001)

Ann Marie Leshkowich (Anthropology, Harvard U. terms ends 2002)

Ex-officio:

Judith Henchy (Library/History, U. Washington, editor of VSG Home Page)

Edith Shillue (U Mass Boston), editor of the Vietnam Studies Bulletin

Hy V. Luong

on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Vietnam Studies Group,

Association of Asian Studies

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