Minutes of VSG Business Meeting

Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting

San Diego, March 6, 2004

At 7:20 pm, VSG Chair Nora Taylor called the meeting to order. The first order of business was to introduce the new Chair of VSG, Michele Thompson of Southern Connecticut State University. Thompson had been chosen by vote of the VSG Executive Board to succeed Taylor for a 3-year term. Thompson is on leave in the fall, and so her term will not officially begin until spring of 2005. Taylor and Pam McElwee, VSG secretary, will handle any VSG business that may come up until Thompson's term begins.

The minutes of the last VSG business meeting from spring 2003's meeting in NYC were unanimously approved by the attendees.

The chair gave a report on the AAS business meetings. Taylor is the VSG representative to the Southeast Asia Council of AAS. Once again, of all SE Asian countries, Vietnam had the most panels on the AAS program (8 total). VSG sponsored one panel (session 88 on Reading Vietnamese Literary, Religious and Social History through Nom Texts, chaired by Cuong Tu Nguyen of George Mason University) and was able to get funding from SEA Council and AAS to bring two scholars from Vietnam to the meeting this year: Khac Thuân Dinh of the Institute of Han-Nôm Studies and An Tran of the Institute for Literature. The chair relayed that the COTSEAL (Council on Teaching Southeast Asian Languages) reports that they are organizing teacher training in Hanoi for Vietnamese language teachers. Additionally, the chair noted that the Journal of Asian Studies editorship is up for renewal this year. 3 Southeast Asian scholars have been shortlisted. If one is successful, it will the 1st time a SEAsianist would be editor of JAS.

The chair then turned to a discussion of how to increase the finances of VSG. There is only around $500 in the VSG bank account. Previously, $1500 had been given to Judith Henchy and her team at U. Washington to develop the database of Vietnam Scholars and a VSG website. The chair noted that all country councils of AAS have similar financial problems, and in fact some are worse off than VSG with no money whatsoever. For example, the Indonesia council has taken to passing a hat at meetings to collect money, so that $250 could be given for grad student travel to AAS. The chair noted that while AAS has some money to bring people over from Vietnam, they need to be on a border-crossing panel in order for this money to be available. Paul Kratowska of National University of Singapore noted that the H-SEA listserve is available to people if they wish to find people to collaborate with in the development of such border crossing panels. Judith Henchy noted that a new VSG website has also been developed that can help with such networking.

Henchy also added that they still have some money remaining from the $1500 given to set up the website, which they will continue to use to work on it. She added that the database of Vietnam scholars is up and running, although they have been having some problems getting Vietnamese names in the database with diacritics and with the way the database indexes disciplines. But since the new website has been up, more people have been sending in new entries to the database, and Judith and her team will need to catch up with this input. Judith also added that she needed to update the news sections of the website, although this takes a great deal of time. She also noted the need to get more Vietnam-based scholars into the database and plugged into VSG generally.

The chair then asked for introductions of all the people attending the VSG meeting (roster and contact information at end of minutes).

Awards and accolades were announced by the chair. Patricia Pelley of Texas Tech was awarded the 2003 First Book prize from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians for her book Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the National Past. Peter Zinoman of U. Berkeley was the 2003 winner of the Benda Prize in SEA scholarship from the AAS last year or his book The Colonial Bastille. Peter and Nguyen Nguyet Cam, also of U. Berkeley, were also honored for their translation of So Do (Dumb Luck), published by University of Michigan Press, with a LA Times Best Books of 2003 mention. A Tran Trong Vu exhibition titled 'Blue Memory" opened at the Arizona State art museum recently, with a visit from the artist as well. The author Pham Thi Hoai was recently in California with lectures at UCLA and Berkeley.

Other announcements were made by the chair, including a statement of the death of Steve Graw last fall. Steve had been a member of the VSG executive committee. Peter Zinoman also announced the death of Christy Malarney, wife of Shaun Malarney, VSG executive committee member as well.

Announcements were made by the chair as to some upcoming conferences and exhibits on Vietnam. "Mekong Lifeways - The Story of 6 Villages" has opened in Ho Chi Minh City, based on photos and documentation of the lives of Kinh, Cham, Khmer, and Hoa people in the Mekong delta. The exhibit will travel to Can Tho and the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology later in 2004. Patricia Pelley announced that the School for International Training will have a new program in the Mekong Delta, based in Can Tho, and is seeking participants and leaders for it. The chair announced that there will be an upcoming conference on Post Socialist Vietnam at Cornell University April 24-25. Christophe Robert explained more on the format of this conference. The 2nd Annual International Conference of Vietnamese Studies will be held this summer, July 14-16, in HCM city. Brian Zottoli of UNESCO Hanoi noted that abstracts for this conference are still being accepted. Maggie Bodemer of U. Hawaii asked about the language of this conference and George Dutton of UCLA stated that most presentations are in Vietnamese with some translation into English. The next EUROSEAS conference will be held in Paris on Sept 1-4 of 2004, and there will be some Vietnam-related panels run by Oscar Salemink, Michele Thompson, and David Del Testa. Interested parties were encouraged to contact these organizers of panels directly. Jack Wills of USC then announced a conference on "New Approaches to Champa Studies" which will be held in Singapore 5-6 August 2004. Jack Wills also announced there will be a International Association of Historians of Asia meeting this 6-10 December at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan. Daniele Belanger of U. of Western Ontario announced a conference on "Post-Transitional Vietnamese Families" at the Institut National d'Études Démographiques in Paris, France, on October 21-23, 2004. Brian Zottoli announced increased research and funding for Cham studies as part of the My Son World Heritage site in Vietnam. He also announced there will be a workshop in June in Hanoi by UNESCO to discuss the recent archeological findings in the Ba Dinh site. Michele Thompson announced that the Nom Foundation will be having a International Nom Conference in Hanoi Oct 21-25, 2004, at the Han Nom Institute in Hanoi. Jack Wills appealed for help from VSG scholars in putting together research panels and papers on Chinese-Annamese relations in the 18th century for other upcoming conferences. Maggie Bodemer noted that the Australian National University will have a Vietnam Summer School week-long seminar as part of their Asia-Pacific Week. (Note from Secretary: more information on most of these conferences is on the VSG website at http://www.lib.washington.edu/southeastasia/vsg/news/conf.html).

The chair then noted that the next AAS meeting will be March 31-April 3, 2005 in Chicago. Submissions for panels will be due August 6th 2004. The chair asked for suggestions of panels in the works. Jack Wills stated he would like to do a panel on Yunnan and its neighbors, building off a panel from the 2003 meeting on Yunnan as part of SEA. Wills is interested in Champa-China connections in particular. Patricia Pelley announced a panel on Catholic evangelism in Indochina. Pam McElwee announced a panel on migration in Vietnam and Indonesia.

Brian Zottoli then made an announcement about the digitizing of the Nom character alphabet, which has now been largely completed. Zottoli noted that UNESCO has a budget for digitizing other languages from Vietnam into UNICODE as well, such as perhaps Cham or other minority languages.

The chair then announced the need to fill 4 positions on the VSG executive committee, to fill positions being vacated by Helen Chauncey; Martin Grossheim; Michael DiGregorio; and Shaun Malarney. She called for nominations from the meeting. Jack Yeager nominated George Dutton, which was seconded and approved. Patricia Pelley was also nominated and approved. Ed Miller, of Harvard, was also nominated and approved. Peter Zinoman nominated Lien Hang Thi Nguyen , of Yale, which was seconded and approved.

In Old Business, the chair reiterated the need to increasing the funds available to VSG, and asked for comments on creating and increasing membership dues. George Dutton stated he was in favor of membership dues. The chair noted that the previous chair, Hy Van Luong, has taken dues at some meetings by passing a hat and asking for $10 from people. David Biggs, of U. Washington, asked what VSG money was needed for and how the money might be managed. The chair explained that money raised by VSG stays with VSG, and VSG does not get funding from AAS nor share it with AAS. Dan Duffy, of UNC, suggested institutionalizing membership dues. Paul Kratowska noted that the SEAC has discretionary funds for special projects that VSG can request, such as money for sending journals to libraries in Vietnam, etc. Bob Jones, formerly of the State Dept., noted that VSG may need money to promote VSG networking outside of the current website. The chair noted that funding from AAS could now be used to bring people to border crossing panels only, and that other scholars on Vietnam-centered panels may not be eligible for AAS funding, so VSG money could be used for that. Bob Jones noted that a listserve that reaches a number of people may be a better use of money than bringing only one or two isolated scholars to a conference every year. Judith Henchy noted that VSG should internationalize, and that serious participation of scholars from Vietnam is lacking in VSG and the AAS, so that brining a few scholars from Vietnam could in fact have a large impact. The chair added that the cost of coming to AAS is prohibitive for most scholars form Vietnam, and that VSG money would be helpful in this regard. Bob Jones noted that VSG may want to expand its outreach to Viet Kieu communities as well, such as those in Orange Country.

Pam McElwee asked if revamping a published newsletter and making that be a reward for membership dues in VSG would be an incentive for people to pay to join VSG. Jack Yeager asked if bibliographies of papers from previous meetings could included in such a newsletter, along with lists of books recently published. Judith Henchy noted that VSG used to have a newsletter, but the website was supposed to take its place, though it was hard to keep on top of all the announcements and publications on Vietnam. She noted that Chris Goscha's listserve on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia often did publish book reviews and other bibliographic information similar to what was being suggested for a VSG newsletter, and it would be hard to find someone to take on these duties, as well as difficult to get people to publish in a VSG newsletter as it was not a peer-reviewed journal. Michele Thompson said that it might be helpful to get publishers to send book notices of publications on Vietnam directly to VSG for promotion in lieu of a newsletter.

In final business, the chair asked for approval of VSG by-laws developed by the chair and approved by the executive committee. The by-laws were unanimously approved by the membership. As there was no other new business, the meeting was then adjourned.

Pam McElwee

Acting VSG secretary

Attendees at 2004 VSG Business Meeting, San Diego

Return to top of page