Minutes 2021

Vietnam Studies Group Annual Meeting 2021

In conjunction with AAS

Tues. March 23, 7-9am PDT / 10-12 EDT

Via zoom due to Covid

The following were present at the Zoom meeting on March 23, 2021 (names as they appeared on Zoom; 51 total): Maggie Bodemer, Richard Tran, Tuan Hoang, Judith Henchy, Chan Phan, Sarah Grant, Ed Miller, Mitch Aso, Ayako Tomizuka, Sean Fear, Charles Keith, C Michele Thompson, Hy Luong, Martha Lincoln, Zoë McLaughlin, Christian Lentz, Frank Proschan, Ann Marie Leshkowich, Nora Taylor, Thuy Do, Oscar Salemink, Chari Hamratanaphon, Christoph Giebel, Alvin Bui, Rachel Tough, Hue-Tam Tai, Hoang Vu, Hieu Phung, David Biggs, Ivan Small, Leedom Lefferts, Merav Shohet, Diane Fox, Pam McElwee, Dat Nguyen, Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox, Claire Edington, George Dutton, Tuong Vu, Christina Schwenkel, Duy Nguyen, Nhàn Ngô, William Noseworthy, Tam Ngo, James Anderson, Martina Nguyen, Daniel Tsang, Phi Van Nguyen, Brian Hammer, Thi Thanh Le Lu, John Tran

1. Membership Info:

      1. Will discuss new membership categories in the bylaws section.

i. https://members.asianstudies.org/donate-now

      1. Membership dues are $20 for professionals and $10 for students/retired/ members/less-developed countries. Any additional funds donated will contribute to our Graduate Paper Prize and Travel Funds to the AAS Annual Meeting.

      2. When you join or renew, make sure to send your receipt to VSG Treasurer Tuan Hoang at tuannyriver@gmail.com

    1. Notetaker for the meeting: Sarah Grant (newly elected ExComm)

    2. Introductions of the Board and Attendees

      1. Attendees:

i. Please have your name listed as you would like it to appear in the minutes. We will collect the list of attendees from Zoom for the minutes.

ii. Please introduce yourself in chat & where you are “zooming from” (depending on size of group)

      1. Board Members:

i. Please introduce yourself, & where you are “zooming from,” then call on the next ExComm member

      1. New ExComm members (2021-2023), read their Bios here

i. Sarah Grant, CSU Fullerton, Anthropology,

ii. Frank Proschan, Independent, Anthropology & Folklore

iii. Vũ Minh Hoàng, Fulbright Univ. Vietnam, History

iv. Tuong Vu, Univ. of Oregon, Political Science

      1. Graduate Student Representatives:

i. Alvin Khiêm Bùi, Univ. of Washington, History

ii. Rachel Tough, Univ. of East Anglia, International Development

      1. Re-elected (2021-2023)

i. Tuan Hoang, Pepperdine, History, Humanities & Great Books

      1. Continuing (terms expire 2022):

i. Diane Fox, unaffiliated, California, Anthropology

ii. Sean Fear, Leeds Univ., International History

iii. Richard Tran, Ca’Foscari Univ. of Venice, Asian & North African Studies

      1. Outgoing ExComm members (Cám ơn!):

i. Christina Schwenkel (-> SEAC!), UC Riverside, Anthropology

ii. Ivan Small, Central Connecticut State Univ., Anthropology

iii. John Phan, Columbia Univ., Language & Culture (teaching, not present)

iv. Mitch Aso, SUNY Albany, History & East Asian Studies

      1. Continuing Webmaster: Judith Henchy, Univ. of Washington Libraries, Southeast Asia collection

      2. As of now, ex-Officio Chair: Maggie Bodemer, Cal Poly, History & Asian Studies

    1. Officer Positions (2021-2023)

      1. Chair: Tuan Hoang, Pepperdine Univ., History & Great Books

      2. Treasurer: Richard Tran, Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Asian and North African Studies

      3. Secretary: Sarah Grant, CSU Fullerton, Anthropology

    2. 2020 VSG Annual Business Meeting minutes: VSG Annual Meeting 2020 Minutes

      1. Please take a look at the minutes and once they are finalized, they will be sent out.

    1. Members need to Vote to adopt (over email)

    2. Committee reports

      1. Grad Paper (Chair: Sean Fear): 13 candidates total (possible all time high with great quality across the board) with committee Sean Fear, Diane Fox, and Mitch Aso; speaks to the strength of Vietnam Studies

i. Alvin Khiem Bui, University of Washington, History, “Father De Jaegher and the “Vietnamization” of the Hoa in the Republic of Vietnam”

ii. Hon. Mention: Phung N. Su, University of California-Berkeley, Sociology,“Why Women Marry to Labor and Men Labor to Marry: Gendered Mobility Strategies in Developing Vietnam”

iii. Hon. Mention: Royce R. Novak. University of Wisconsin-Madison, History, “Võ Thị Sáu: The Guerrilla, the Goddess, and the Girl”

iv. Past winners - Sean has compiled them and these will be on our website soon! Thank you Sean! Next year’s prize call will be announced soon.

Discussion (Hue-Tam Tai): wondering whether it’s possible to post winning papers on the VSG website to access/read in the broader Vietnam Studies community

Discussion (Judith Henchy): would need permission from the authors but a university repository would make it much easier to link to papers with a formal/stable URL

Discussion (Maggie Bodemer): mentioned that we’ve asked the winner of the previous awardee to serve on the committee in the coming year and will keep graduate students involved without a conflict of interest

v. We are initiating a new practice to invite the winner of the Grad Prize to participate in the selection committee the following year, following similar practices of other prizes such as the Benda Prize (see discussion above)

      1. Sponsored Panel (n/a this year due to Covid, AAS has suspended): Richard Tran introduced panel

i. Please note the VSG Sponsored panel “Biopolitical Vietnam” that was selected for 2020, will be part of AAS 2021, and is scheduled for Tues March 23, 12-1:30 PM EDT, directly after our VSG meeting! Martha and Claire shared details on their pre-recorded/live discussion VSG sponsored panel. Proposal for a special issue in consideration with JVS right now to read expanded versions of these talks in the future.

1. Here is the lineup of presentations for “Biopolitical Vietnam” co-organized by Martha Lincoln and Claire Edington:

2. “Drugs, Detox and the Colonial Biopolitics of Addiction in French Indochina” by Claire Edington, UCSD

3. “Leaves Falling Back to Their Roots”: Chinese Migrants, Repatriations of Remains, and Colonial Modernity in French Cochinchina, 1892-1893 by Anh Sy Huy Le, Michigan State University

4. “Biopolitics in Transition: Explaining Poverty’s Causes in Socialist and Post-Socialist Vietnam” by Martha Lincoln, San Francisco State University

5. “Psychopharmaceutical Adherence and Family Caregivers in Postreform Vietnam” by Allen Tran, Bucknell University

6. Discussion by Ann Marie Leshkowich, College of the Holy Cross

ii. We do not yet know the status of the sponsored panels for future, because AAS last year announced it was suspending them. We are waiting to hear from SEAC and AAS about whether this will change. VSG hopes that AAS will go back to allowing them because it is a good way to highlight new work.

      1. Travel Awards (n/a this year due to virtual format): No awards given this year due to the pandemic.

    1. Chair’s report (Maggie Bodemer): asking for reports by March 31 (note that SEAC meeting is on April 9th)

      1. SEAC is not asking country chairs to attend the SEAC meeting this year. We can request a one-on-one with SEAC Chair Richard Fox

      2. Longtime ExComm member Christina Schwenkel and Pamela McElwee have been elected to serve on SEAC

    2. Journal of Vietnamese Studies (JVS) Update (Christina Schwenkel): number of submissions received (n=57) was very high with an increased number of submissions from colleagues in Vietnam (over 50% of submissions were from Vietnamese colleagues); disproportionate rate of rejected papers from Vietnamese colleagues. How can we provide editorial support to our colleagues in Vietnam to increase acceptance rates? There is a general call for editorial support for junior colleagues in Vietnam, but this measure was voted down last year at VSG Board Meeting. If anyone is interested in supporting Vietnamese colleagues with review, especially work with language, grammar, and formulation of arguments, please reach out to Charles Keith and Christina Schwenkel. Christina announced the latest issue of JVS, “Global Vietnam” as a special issue that highlights the emergence of Vietnam Studies around the world.

Discussion (Charles Keith): reiterated that JVS is open for special issue proposals that stem from conference panels; please consider JVS as an afterlife for your panel, or other workshops.

Discussion (Hue-Tam Tai): wondering about submission from Vietnamese colleagues; has helped with developmental editing and one question that authors must consider is that they cannot submit the same article to different publication venues even if the original version was in Vietnamese. What kind of articles were rejected and according to what criteria? Was it purely language and formulation of argument or…?

Discussion (Christina Schwenkel): Papers are rejected for a number of different reasons; the JVS board takes a vigorous look at submissions. Many that don’t make it to the review stage don’t really fit with Vietnamese Studies (e.g., a policy paper) and those with strong potential get sent out for review but this doesn’t mean they make it through to acceptance as they may not reach standards for publication.

Discussion (Hue-Tam Tai): Vietnamese colleagues want to publish in Western language publications. Wondering if members of the board are asked to help with particular aspects of this editorial work? How do you go about getting other scholars to help out junior scholars in general (in Vietnam, US, and elsewhere)?

Discussion (Christina Schwenkel): thinking about editorial work through disciplinary connections and asking people to assist as needed.

Discussion (Charles Keith): there are always going to be limitations based on discipline and background so anyone interested in editorial work should reach out to Charles and Christina.

Discussion (Hy Luong): Wondering about the acceptance rate at JVS last year. Suggests that an increased number of submissions from Vietnam reflects institutional pressure in Vietnam right now on academics in the country (i.e., faculty members need so many publications in Scopus and other prestigious journals); mentioned that SSRC held a number of workshops around Asia several years ago to provide training around improving acceptance rates for academics in Asian countries. Has this workshop been held in Vietnam? Even so, it’s just one workshop and not a regular source of support.

Discussion (Christian Lentz): participated in such a workshop and found it a good model (AIFIS that pairs American academics with Indonesian writers).

Discussion (Judith Henchy): comments that this workshop was canceled in Vietnam because of COVID.

Discussion (Christina Schwenkel): JVS is now listed in Scopus but now we need to work with colleagues on grammatical and writing support. What sort of model would work?

Discussion (Frank Proschan): promotion is one issue but at the University of Social Sciences, Hanoi, admission to the Ph.D. program requires international publications in hand. Because of this need, we need to be careful that VSG efforts are not linked to JVS. All of us have published in area/regional studies journals but also discipline specific journals.

Discussion (Oscar Salemink): it’s a lot of work to do this editorial work; consider thinking about this idea of co-authoring and theme issues as a way to make this happen.

Discussion (Hue-Tam Tai): noted that requirements for Vietnamese colleagues are different from junior scholars in N. America or Europe, especially around conversant theory in one’s respective field.

Discussion (Hoang Vu): happy to be the point person for these efforts in Vietnamese colleague publications; would there ever be VSG funding for workshops for this sort of thing?

Discussion (Maggie Bodemer): Contact Charles, Christina, or Sarah if anyone is interested in working on any of this through JVS specifically

      1. New JVS Representative/Liaison to VSG: Sarah Grant (through Multimedia Review Editor role) à new research essays and very open around this category (music, art, film, photography, etc.)

    1. Membership report (Tuan Hoang)

      1. Currently at 81 members, a record number: when Tuan began it was just 50 dues paying members but now that number has come up quite a bit.

      2. Membership categories: will add “International Less Developed Country” membership, which is meant to encourage more Vietnamese membership and participation; this is a new category here borrowed directly from AAS and designed to encourage more Vietnam-based scholar membership.

Discussion (Leedom Lefferts): Has the terminology, "International less Developed Country" been accepted? Recommend making it something less prejudicial, such as, "membership from Southeast Asia." (see further discussion below)

    1. Treasurer's report (Tuan Hoang) & Budget

      1. Normally, in a F2F meeting we would have everything and ask members to vote. We will do this by email this year. We had hoped to have our financial report and budget ready for this meeting but were unable due to several factors, including the staff changes at AAS. Tuan shared a report on the starting balance ($6398.23) and current balance ($6445.74) and noted that there was not much chance to spend because of the pandemic and cancellation of events along with members keeping up with dues and donations. Looking ahead there are plans to spend money in the next few months: AAS approved up to $900 to support IT expenses for the BU conference in May and the Hát Xẩm conference ($500 committed).

      2. ExComm plans to organize this information and present it to members via email, with the goal by April 15. Maggie: we don’t have the budget ready to propose right now but we will send it around April 15.

Discussion (Hue-Tam Tai): The “less developed countries” designation is a concern; could we just say “membership from Southeast Asia” or even “Asia” or “Vietnam” would be much better. Throughout the years have been making donations to VSG without specificizing which purpose, so: would it be possible to assign donations to membership for Vietnamese based scholar and who would benefit from such membership? How does the donor know who benefits from the U.S. or Europe?

Discussion (Tuan Hoang): Can designate how you use your donation to any particular purposes but haven’t thought about the mechanism to do that.

Discussion (Christian Lentz): Last meeting in person, Tuan mentioned that some members were delinquent with sending membership dues. Now that we can earmark our $20 with our AAS membership has the option to contribute via AAS rather than just sending checks or cash, made a difference in membership? Maggie suggested that in general, Tuan’s outreach couple with the ease of donation may have improved the consistency and rate of contributions to VSG.

Discussion (Judith Henchy): relationship between VSG and AAS has come up in the chat. Do you need to be a member of AAS to be a member of VSG? In the past there are members who have not been members of AAS? Maggie will address when we get to the Bylaws.

    1. Election, website & listserv report (Judith Henchy): Judith shared the search features of bibliographies and the database through Zotero (since 2015), a well spent $60/year for this archiving and hub online.

      1. Rules committee

i. Last year we discussed adding the following two rules for the listserv:

ii. Proposed additional rule (#7): Participants shall obtain consent and give proper attribution to VSG submissions, before posting, reposting, publishing or intentionally facilitating the publication of any post from VSG. To do so without prior approval from the original author or unless the information in the post(s) is an announcement meant for wider distribution is considered a violation of professional courtesy.

iii. Proposed additional rule (#8): Violators of the rules may be removed by ExComm after two strikes/violations. Additionally, if a person is warned by the ExComm, and replies in an abusive or belligerent way, or violates professional courtesy, ExComm reserves the right to remove that person from the list immediately. In short, an abusive response to a warning will result in immediate expulsion.

1. Discussion?

2. Vote. If approved, these will be posted with the other existing rules on our website https://sites.google.com/a/uw.edu/vietnamstudiesgroup/about-the-organization

    1. Bylaws

    2. VSG Bylaws for Review by Members

      1. Review, discussion (up to 20 min), voting: Frank Proschan noted that these bylaws will have to go to the AAS for approval regardless. Maggie Bodemer noted that if approved, we will post to our website and file with AAS. We will send it back by/around April 15th for a vote. Discussion:

· Tuan Hoang: comments on section 5.5. + 5.5.2 term limits; terms for these positions have traditionally been three years so is it possible to shift this to 2 years or even 1 year is on the table? Because ExComm officers are elected to 3-year positions.

· Michelle Thompson: the secretary can be year-by-year because it’s just note-taking but for the Treasurer and Chair, a term of at least two years (even if they become an officer in their last year of the ExComm) is necessary for the consistency and familiarity of these roles, especially for Chair and Treasurer.

· Frank Proschan: if someone is elected to officer position towards the end of their ExComm term, they’re grandfathered in without members voting on it. Trying to avoid de facto preemption of rights of members to elect members of a committee; a move to direct election of three officers would avoid this.

· Michelle Thompson: Not opposed to the direct elections but nominees should still come from within the ExComm. Valuable to serve for a year to see what these positions do, especially the VSG relationship with AAS. Historically it has been difficult to get enough people to join the ExComm, it’s not really an election anyway. Keep this in mind while thinking about term limits and elections.

· Hue-Tam Tai: Re: Secretary role. Couldn’t some of the duties be redistributed to the secretary and the secretary would then serve a three-year term just like other members of the executive committee. Then the duties wouldn’t be limited just to the AAS meeting but may include other roles beyond the annual meeting notetaking.

· Maggie Bodemer: See Section 6 for officers’ roles; the term limit of two years makes sense because it gives someone an opportunity to see how VSG works for a year and then commit to a two-year term. But maybe three years is too much. Email Maggie, Frank and Tuan with any comments on this particular bylaw about officers’ terms or anything about Bylaws.

· Frank Proschan: Membership (Article 4), bylaws of AAS very clearly say that only members of AAS are allowed to be members of groups (e.g., VSG). No ambiguity there. Can go onto the AAS membership and pay VSG dues apart from AAS dues but…this doesn’t remove the requirements in the AAS Bylaws that members in a group must be members of the association. Membership categories and dues: residents of ODA recipient countries (Vietnam is no longer a “LDC” but still in the ODC list of aid recipients). See AAS bylaws here: https://www.asianstudies.org/about/bylaws/

o Problem is cost of dollar transactions are too high – if it costs too much to make the international transfer, more than the actual amount, then we need to reconsider this option. (Article 4)

· Michelle Thompson: if the ExComm decides to continue VSG membership without AAS membership, it is worth considering what other SEAC members are doing for comparison and models.

· Maggie: Reach out to SEAC members to see what other country groups have membership dues and how they’re doing it. Our workaround is that only members of the ExComm have to be members of AAS. Can also discuss via email, please reach out to ExComm.

· Judith Henchy: Comment on VSG members holding office with/without AAS membership. We can just remove that first sentence about VSG members being eligible to hold office and replace with “only members of AAS are eligible to hold office…”

i. Postponed to November 4-5, 2021 in Ninh Bình Province, will coincide with the Annual Hát Xẩm Founder's Day with competitions will occur at the same time

ii. Venue host: Department of Culture and Tourism of Ninh Bình was appointed to host the 2021 Year of Tourism for Vietnam.

iii. There are 26 abstracts, with 3 more added from the U.S. and Australia and 1 more from Vietnam. Deadlines for abstracts are postponed to August 15, 2021, and for full papers, to October 1, 2021.

iv. By then, most likely, visitors will no longer be confined 14 days prior to the Conference. There is a suggestion that the conference and festival be hybrid.

v. The leadership of the Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture and Society is committed to be at the Conference.

vi. Four articles will be drafted for the Special Issue of Journal of Vietnamese Studies (JVS). One on the history of Hát Xẩm, one on the Xẩm instruments, one on the use of spectrograms for music analysis and genre identification, one on the design and use of web digital archives. The basic information page has started here: http://yeswecanmusic.us/hatxam/, a mirror page of http://mlp.cs.nyu.edu/folk.arts/hatxam/ There may be one additional articles on the literary values of Hát Xẩm. The editors are the directors from VCAS and the Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture and Society.

      1. Boston Workshop had to be postponed due to Covid, plans to hold it online (Merav Shohet and Dat Nguyen)

i. Was originally proposed to take place right before AAS, designed to include graduate students and scholars from Vietnam. But it was cancelled at the very last minute because of the pandemic – hoped to reconvene in October but agreed to postpone and hold on Zoom this May 28, 2021. Approximately 25 participants are still involved, and VSG has agreed to fund the technology funds of the conference through Boston University (BU). It will run as a daylong Zoom event. Hoping that with the virtual format more people will attend as guests, dropping in and out as possible. Keynotes: Hue-Tam Tai and Hy Luong, hoping to have open ended conversations about the past, present, and future of Vietnam Studies. Silences & Reverberations: What has remained silent and why? Why certain themes in Vietnam Studies continue to reverberate through the past and present? See: https://sites.bu.edu/vnsympos/. Time zones will be complicated but online format makes it accessible to a broader audience.

    1. Member & Visitor News, publications, papers or panels at AAS, conferences, etc.

      1. Depending on time, please feel free to post your update in the chat

i. Michelle Thompson and members: thanks to Maggie for all of your hard work!

ii. Congratulations to Christian C. Lentz for winning the Harry J. Benda Prize for his book, Contested Territory: Điện Biên Phủ and the Making of Northwest Vietnam (Yale University Press, 2019).

iii. And congrats on other books and awards and elections to SEAC!

      1. Please share if you are presenting AAS

· Pamela McElwee is giving a talk for the University of Utah Global Change and Sustainability Center Seminar Series, “Sustainable Development in Southeast Asia in a Post-COVID Era”, March 23

      1. Other upcoming events of potential interest to VSG folks

      2. Please share publication news, etc. as well

      3. Vietnam Studies Research Snapshots Webinars (VSRS), founded in April 2020 by a multidisciplinary group of Vietnamese scholars based in different parts of the world, led by Lan Anh Hoang (University of Melbourne), Phan Le Ha (Universiti Brunei Darussalam & University of Hawaii at Manoa), and An Huy Trần (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany). Digital platform for disseminating Vietnam-focused research in social sciences and humanities. Through this webinar series, the group seeks to foster a global network of Vietnam Studies scholars and students from within and outside Vietnam. They aim to connect generations of Vietnam Studies researchers across thematic and disciplinary groups through intellectual debates, networking activities, and mutual support. https://www.facebook.com/VSRSwebinars

      4. Engaging with VN - http://engagingwithvietnam.org/ 2021 in Kyoto

    1. Next annual VSG meeting, at AAS, in 2022, hopefully Face to Face in Honolulu!

    2. Adjourn – meeting adjourned at 9:00am PST, at 14.b