Advice on Graduate Schools
From: tim aller <timaller@hotmail.com>
Date: Sep 14, 2005 11:44 PM
Subject: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
I'm a senior with a double major in Political Science, emphasis on
International Relations, and Global Studies with an emphasis on Southeast
Asia/Vietnam. I seem to have most of the qualifications required by grad
schools but the more research I do the more complex applying to grad school
seems to become.
I have used the "Research and Study" section of the VSG website, but I'm
interested in modern Vietnamese politics, not just the Vietnamese language.
I'm also very interested in comparative politics: Vietnam and China. And
would very much like to study the Vietnamese elections in 2007 and the
Chinese elections in 2008. If anyone could pass on some advice about great
MA/PhD programs in Political Science/Comparative Politics or International
Affairs with a faculty rich with experts on Vietnam I would be greatly
appreciativ.
Thanks in advance,
Timothy Aller
From: Jeanie Glaspell <bglaspell@earthlink.net> Mailed-By: mailman1.u.washington.edu
Reply-To: bglaspell@earthlink.net, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sep 15, 2005 8:28 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Tim- Depends on where you are going to use the degree and in what career
field. I was a career counselor for many years advising students on
college choice and I also majored in SEA studies. Many government
positions are filled with individuals from univ that specialize in SEA and
have State department connections. Example: The Foreign Service is
primarily filled with graduates from Georgetown and American Univ with some
Harvard and UCB mixed ( 95% according to their personnel department). So
you can see that just having an MA is no ticket to a job in the State
department. Fish and Wildlife hires primarily from 5 universities due to
research, summer employment connections. Their are many fine universities
in the US specializing in SEA but only a few with direct research and
intern connections. I always tell students that are looking for a college
to first call the company or business they wish to end up in and find out
what schools they hire form. The market is filled with people with degrees
in SEA but they either don't have the language/experience qualifications or
lack the "right" school credentials. Hope this helps. Let me know if I
can suggest some specific schools. Brian Glaspell, Port Townsend, Wash.
From: Peter Van Do <vando@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: Sep 15, 2005 9:00 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Hi, Brian,
I am also thinking about applying to several graduate schools, like Tim. I am
very interested to hear your suggestions of some specific schools.
From: Judith Henchy <judithh@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sep 15, 2005 11:20 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Folks,
In response to this inquiry, I have started to pull together, from my
recollections and from the Database of Scholars, a list of faculty strengths
as a guide to potential students. I welcome comments.
I would advise potential students who are interested in studying Viet Nam to
look to those schools which teach the language. Even if you do not intent
to learn it, those tend to be the schools with strong SEA programs and
library collections. Most Southeast Asia programs with a focus on Viet Nam
are also federally funded SEA National Resources Centers (NRCs). The
advantage of studying at these Centers is that they can offer a student a
disciplinary training, as well as language training and wide range of other
educational exposures across disciplines and other countries of SE Asia.
Typically a Center will have at least six core faculty across the social
sciences and humanities with a focus on the countries of SEA. NRCs (and
some other institutions without full NRC status) also offer FLAS (foreign
language and area studies) language study awards. Those Federally funded
Centers with Viet Nam studies programs are:
Cornell (Keith Taylor, Loraine Patterson, both History, other?)
UC Berkeley (Peter Zinoman , History)
University of Washington (Christoph Giebel, History)
UCLA (George Dutton, History)
Hawaii (Steve O'Harrow, Language and Literature, Liam Kelly, premodern
history)
Arizona State (Nora Taylor, Art History. Undergraduate Center only)
Other strong SEA programs without Federal National Resource Center status:
Harvard (Hue Tam Ho Tai, History) - FLAS only?
George Washington Uni (Shawn McHale, History) SEA Consortium with other DC
schools.
Other National Resource Centers for SEA, without strong focus on Viet Nam
are:
U of Wisconsin at Madison
U of Michigan at Ann Arbor (does teach Vietnamese but no tenured faculty
working on VN?)
Ohio University
Northern Illinois University
Locations with nascent SEA programs and scholars of Viet Nam
UC Riverside (David Biggs, environmental History)
UC Irvine (Charles Wheeler, early history; Christina Schwenkel,
Anthropology?)
Institutions with isolated SEA scholars who focus on Viet Nam
Pomona College (David Elliot, Political science)
S Connecticut State (Michele Thompson, Medical History)
Southern Illinois (William Turley, Political Science) I'm not sure if
Bill has retired.
Dartmouth College (Ed Miller, History)
Long Island University (Jayne Werner, Political Science)
Bucknell University (David DelTesta, History)
College of the Holy Cross (Ann Marie Leshkowich, Anthropology)
Texas Tech (Pat Pelley, History, Vietnam War Archive)
University of N. Carolina (Jamie Anderson, premodern history)
I welcome additions and corrections to this list. It might be a useful
guide to attach to the web site.
Judith
From: William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
Date: Sep 15, 2005 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Dear Judith and Group,
I found your list interesting and informative. As for my own status, no, I'm not retired, but I will be in a year or two so indeed it would not be a good idea for anyone to start graduate studies under me at this time. As for Timothy Aler's interest in the comparative politics of Vietnam and China, I would suggest he look into the University of Virginia, where Brantly Womack is one of the exceptionally few political scientists who does serious work on both countries. See his forthcoming book on asymmetric international relations and earlier work (with me) on HCMC and Guangzhou as sources of pressure for economic reform. And for any political scientist who wants to "do" Vietnam or any area study, I sadly must say it is still advisable to give priority to mastering the "science" and work in the area on the side.
Cheers,
Bill Turley
From: Diane Fox (dnfox) <dnfox@hamilton.edu> >
Date: Sep 15, 2005 12:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Marilynn Young, NYU?
And I think Christina Schwenkel is now affiliated with Stanford,
though currently in Vietnam. Perhaps she can speak for herself?!
df
From: Diane Fox (dnfox) <dnfox@hamilton.edu> >
Date: Sep 15, 2005 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Eric Henry, North Carolina..
Date: Sep 15, 2005 1:18 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Don't forget Thu Huong Nguyen Vo at UCLA. She's a Political Scientist by training but she's *very* inter-disciplinary; she can do/publish about almost anything. She's located in the East Asian Languages and Culture department.
Best,
Christina Firpo
From: adam <adam@aduki.com.au>
Date: Sep 15, 2005 2:57 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
To: VSG (onshore faction)
Various offshore political scientists with good publication and / or
research records relating to Vietnam or major relevant expertise
include:
Martin Gainsborough (Bristol, West England) - many recent publications
on Vietnamese politics
John Kleinen (Amsterdam, a city in The Netherlands) - sociologist /
anthropologist of wide experience
Ben Kerkvliet (ANU, Canberra, Australia), Prof, Head of Dept of
Political and Social Change, wide range of publications on Vietnam
Regina Abrami (Harvard, near NYC), political scientist, fluent in
Chinese and Vietnamese, recent PhD comparing the two countries,
publication widely awaited
Melanie Beresford (Macquarie, Australia), political scientist and
economist, a number of major studies.
Apologies to those I have left out.
Adam
From: Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
Date: Sep 15, 2005 11:30 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Vietnamese is also taught at Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced
International Studies in Washington, DC and tends to actually be a
quite popular language even though it was only introduced in 1997.
Fred Brown was the main professor with an interest in Vietnam at SAIS,
but he has just retired. James Riedel, also faculty at SAIS, maintains
a Vietnam focus, but has taught primarily at the Nanjing campus in
recent years. Carlyle Thayer was at SAIS last year, but I'm unclear
whether or not that is still the case.
From: Mariam B. Lam <mariam.beevi@ucr.edu>
Date: Sep 15, 2005 6:56 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Dear Tim,
A shameless plug for graduate studies at the University of
California, Riverside. You can apply to any Ph.D. program,
such as Political Science or History, AND get an MA in
Southeast Asian Studies along the way. Our Philosophy Dept.
is also particularly strong in political philosophy. My
advice to my own students is not to put all your eggs in one
basket. You never know if you're going to mesh well with one
particular scholar, so best to have options.
In the way of Vietnamists, we have three faculty (David Biggs
in History, Lan Duong in Women's Studies, and myself in
Comparative Literature), as well as our lecturer in Vietnamese
Language, Kim Dung Pham. The three of us happen to be mostly
entrenched in the 20th Century and heavily invested in
contemporary politics. In Political Science, three faculty
specialize on political elections and global studies, John
Cioffi, Bronwyn Leebaw, and Antoine Yoshinaka, and we have at
least five Sinologists across our Asian Studies Program, with
at least three in the modern period. Do visit the
website: www.ucr.edu,
and let me know if you have any
questions.
You may also work with our wonderful Vietnam colleagues at the
other University of California campuses (LA, Berkeley, Irvine,
San Diego, Santa Barbara, Davis) (up to two from other campuses
on your qualifying exam committee at UCR).
ANU Canberra also comes to mind first as having multiple strong
faculty in Vietnam Studies.
Hope this demystifies a bit, Tim, and my apologies to
everyone else! Mariam
From: Christoph Giebel <giebel@u.washington.edu>
Date: Sep 15, 2005 8:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Colleagues,
Thanks to Judith for starting this preliminary and sure-to-grow list.
She has modestly left herself off the Univ. of Washington (Seattle)
entry, so let me add that Judith is a leading Southeast Asia librarian,
"ruling" over one of the best Vietnamese materials collections in North
America, and an accomplished scholar of modern Vietnamese intellectual
history in her own right. In fact, she will defend her PhD
dissertation on Nguyen An Ninh and Pham Van Hum in less than three
weeks!
Additionally at UW, Charles "Biff" Keyes in Anthropology and Charles
Hirschmann in Sociology/Demography have strong research foci in Viet
Nam. Veronica Taylor is director of the UW Law School's Asian Law
Center, equally with research interests in Viet Nam. Finally,
Vietnamese is taught at all levels at UW.
Outside UW, I'd also like to add Sophie Quinn-Judge at Temple
University to the list.
Would someone compile similar lists for Viet Nam scholars in Canada,
Europe, Southeast Asia, Australia/New Zealand, van van...?
Christoph Giebel
From: Dan Duffy <dduffy@email.unc.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 3:38 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Two points:
Since so many people now do both a terminal MA/MS and a Ph.D. at another
institution, one path is to do one at an NRC center and another not at
one, one in your discipline and the other in your area.
Since so much of what is interesting about Vietnamese people is that
they are all over the world, another area to consider studying is France
or Germany or Canada or Scandinavia or the US.
There are usually buckets of money going begging for Americans who want
to study Canada or Scandinavia or the Netherlands, and these countries
as well as France and Germany in turn are avid for research on their
immigrants.
If you want to do the States, and are willing to deal with our issues,
the UC system is an especially promising place to study Vietnam and the
diaspora. Mariam Bevi-Lam and a mounting list of others are at
Riverside as well as David Biggs. UCLA has George Dutton as well as
Thu-Huong Nguyen Vo.
Dan
From: Nora Taylor <Nora.Taylor@asu.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 5:15 AM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
will add to Judith's list by saying that Pam McEwee will be at Arizona State University in January as a faculty member in a new ASU School of GLobal Studies. You can check on the website to find out about the degrees offered but it might be a way to combine interests in Vietnam and global politics.
Happy hunting,
Nora
From: Christine Pothier <cpothier01@yahoo.ca>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 5:26 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
In Canada, we have Dr. Micheline Lessard, Department
of History at the University of Ottawa; Dr. Julie
Nguyen, International Studies at U of Toronto; Dr.
Danielle Belanger, Sociology at Western University;
Dr. Lisa Drummond, Department of Geography at York
University; Dr. Hy Van Luong, Anthropology at U of
Toronto.
This is certainly not a complete list. My apologies to
those I've left out.
Christine Pothier
PhD student, Department of History
University of Ottawa
From: swomack@umich.edu <swomack@umich.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 6:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
I'd like to second the comment (Bill Turley's?) that the disciplinary
strength of a program needs to be a primary consideration, especially
for those
interested in academic positions whose search committees will be
unfamiliar with
the area. Also, though we don't have many tenured Vietnam specialists at
Michigan, we do have the enormous advantage of courses taught by John
Whitmore,
still one of the great scholars and mentors of Vietnamese studies, and of a
great deal of general interest in Vietnam in the humanities, social sciences,
law, and business.
It's great to see so many options for Vietnamese studies!
Sarah Womack
Albion College
From: Lisa Drummond <drummond@yorku.ca>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 6:21 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Last night I tried to send this msg, but it bounced back. Hope I have better
luck this time...
Apologies if I missed the contribution which listed all the faculty with some
Vietnam expertise in southern Ontario and Montreal (I am not sure about other
Quebec universities), but I don't think I saw
one. So here is a list of (I think) a pretty impressive concentration of
English-/French-speaking faculty working on Vietnam all within roughly a few
hours to a day's drive:
Van Nguyen-Marshall, Trent, History
Daniele Belanger, Western Ontario, Sociology
Micheline Lessard, Ottawa, History
Steffanie Scott, Waterloo, Geography
Jean Michaud, Montreal, Anthropology
Sarah Turner, McGill, Geography
Chris Goscha, UQaM, History
Rodolphe de Konincke, UQaM, Geography
Nhung Nguyet Tran, Toronto, History
Hy Van Luong, Toronto, Anthropology
Eric Jennings, Toronto, History (French colonial history)
Lisa Drummond, York, Urban Studies
More apologies if I've left anyone out. I have the feeling I have done. And
possibly got affiliations mixed up. But this is just off the top of my head.
From: Michele Thompson <thompsonc2@southernct.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 6:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Wynn Wilcox, Western Connecticut State and if we are including Canada Laurence Monnais University of Montreal
cheers
Michele
Michele Thompson
Dept. of History
Southern Connecticut State University
From: Michele Thompson <thompsonc2@southernct.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 7:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Nhung Tuyet Tran and Lisa Drummond at Toronto, Hy Van Luong is still there too I believe,
From: Dan Tsang <dtsang@lib.uci.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 8:19 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Another Univ of California new faculty hire in Vietnam studies is:
Edmund Malesky in political science at International Relations and Pacific
Studies graduate school at UC San Diego, just hired.
His biographical profile:
http://www-irps.ucsd.edu/academics/f-malesky.php
Excerpt: His thesis focuses on the politics of economic reform in
Vietnam where he has shown a fascinating coalition between provincial
economic officials and foreign investors to induce economic reforms by the
central government. Malesky has served as a consultant for the World Bank,
the Asia Foundation and German Technical Cooperation in Vietnam.
dan
From: Stephen Denney <sdenney@ocf.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 10:11 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
I am not really qualified to advise on grad schools and various teachers
and programs, but one aspect that needs to be considered is the quality of
the libraries and collections at the universities. There are presently a
few libraries in the U.S. that receive large numbers of books from
Vietnam on an ongoing basis, these would include Cornell, University of
Michigan, University of Washington, U.C. Berkeley, and of course the
Library of Congress. Most of the books we receive here at UCB from
Vietnam are in Vietnamese, I would guess over 90 percent. Thanks to
internet, it is possible to browse by call number the holdings of these
and other university libraries. Here are the main LC call number
categories that come to mind for Vietnam by which one can browse:
DS531-DS560.9 - Vietnamese history (includes a wide range of subjects,
such as biography, geography, history of ethnic groups, as well as general
historical subject categories).
KPV1-KPV9000 - Vietnamese law
JQ800-JQ899 - Vietnamese politics, political science
PL4371-PL4378.9 - Vietnamese language and literature. PL4378 is Vietnamese
literature; PL4378.9 is Vietnamese literature by author.
HC444 - Vietnamese economy
UA853.V5 - Vietnamese armed forces; UA853.48 is South Vietnamese (RVN)
armed forces
S471.V47-S471.V52 - Vietnamese agriculture
RA541.V5 - Vietnamese health
N7314 - Vietnamese art
BL2055 - Vietnamese religion; BQ492-BQ506 for Buddhism in Vietnam
In addition, there are archives and collections of the universities. Here
at U.C. Berkeley, we have had a major collection originally established by
the late Douglas Pike, ex-FSO officer in Vietnam, originally known as the
Indochina Archive. Mr. Pike moved to Texas Tech in 1997 and along with
that about half of the collection also moved to TTU, mostly Vietnam war
materials; but we kept the remaining files, which included most of the
files on North and South Vietnam during the war as well as post-75
materials. I worked there from 1983-2002, the last few years on a
part-time basis because of the difficult funding situation. I don't know
if anyone works there now or what the future might be of the collection,
presently under the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at UCB, but here is
a breakdown of the files by subject category (one drawer is an office
sized file cabinet drawer, about 3 feet long) from an inventory I wrote up
after Mr. Pike left in 1997:
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~sdenney/file.txt
With the exception of the Vietnamese periodicals, most of the material is
in English; this does not include material acquired since 1997, such as
the donation of over three file cabinets of files from the Southeast
Asia/Indochina Resource Center, which was the major antiwar research group
in the U.S. and continued through the early 1980s.
In its heyday we had scholars, journalists and government officials from
around the world visiting and researching the collection.
- Steve Denney
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 11:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
George Herring, Patterson school of Diplomacy & International Commerce (History)
I think he's retiring this year.
Nguyen Ba Chung
From: Hao Phan <haophan@library.ucla.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 11:35 AM
Subject: Re: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Hi
I would like UCLA library to be considered one of the libraries "that
receive large numbers of books from Vietnam on an ongoing basis" as well.
Vietnamese studies is the focus of the SEA program here, and as a SEA
studies librarian whose native language is Vietnamese, I do buy a lot of
Vietnamese materials.
Hao Phan
From: Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
Date: Sep 16, 2005 3:04 PM
Subject: RE: [Vsg] Advice on Grad Schools
Ngo Vinh Long, University of Maine (History)
Chung Hoang Chuong, SFCC (Vietnamese American studies)
Ta Minh Hoa, SFCC (Vietnamese American studies)