Conferences and Announcements

Upcoming Conferences

Archive of Conference Announcements

AAS 2025 Columbus: 

• VSG Annual Meeting at AAS 2025 Columbus

Friday, March 14, 2025; 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Room: Union D (2nd Floor, Hyatt Regency)

• AAS 2025 VSG Designated Panel 

ENTANGLED AND ESTRANGED: HISTORIES OF VIETNAM AND THE SINOSPHERE DURING THE LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY

Saturday, March 15, 2025

8:30 AM – 10:00 AM

Fairfield (2nd Floor, Hyatt Regency)

VSG-sponsored Panel

Our panel proposes a “multi-scopic global history” that repositions twentieth century Vietnam at the center of interactions, contestations, and collaborations in the Sinosphere. By highlighting critical moments of intertwined state-building, the rise of new political institutions, and the expansion of trans-regional economic trajectories, four papers demonstrate how Vietnamese historical experiences can help decenter the mainland China-centric approaches to Sinophone studies. Linh Vu explores the cultural and science diplomacy between the Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of China during the early Cold War era, emphasizing the shared desire to create a modern Confucianism-based alliance. Anh Le’s paper reexamines the French colonial state’s tariff regulations targeting the rice trade in southern Vietnam and its ensuing conflicts with the Chinese community, highlighting the disruptions to inter-Asian rice commerce and the altering of Franco-diasporic Chinese relationships. Patrick Buck examines the Republic of China’s financial contributions and exchanges with the Republic of Vietnam over knowledge production relating to Sinology and Confucianism during the Cold War, showing how the Chinese Nationalist regime engaged with Vietnam’s ideological discourses. Luan Vu uses periodicals and travelogues to reveal the evolving perception of Vietnamese intellectuals toward China and the Sinosphere amidst the transition from the tributary system to modern nation-state governance. Responding to Rachel Leow’s call to “foreground historical processes of becoming, emergence, and ecologies of encounters,” we spotlight the overlooked entanglements and estrangements that have solidified Vietnam’s significance in global history and the Sinosphere of maritime Southeast Asia spanning British Malaya, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Sino-Vietnamese borderlands.

Organizers

Linh D Vu, Arizona State University

Anh Sy Huy Le, Muhlenberg College

Chair & discussant

Claire Edington, University of California, San Diego

Presentations

Entangled State-Building and Its Ramifications: Colonial Rice Tariff and the Chinese Diaspora in Southern Vietnam, 1862-1925

Anh Sy Huy Le, Muhlenberg College

Vietnamese Intellectuals’ Perceptional Changes of China and a New Understanding of the Sinosphere in Early Twentieth Century Vietnam – A Study of Nam Phong Magazine

Luan Vu, Vietnam National University

Reaching into the Past: The Republic of Vietnam and the Republic of China in the early Cold War era

Linh D Vu, Arizona State University

Nationalist China’s Confucian Entanglements in South Vietnam during the Cold War

Patrick Buck, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

AAS 2024 Seattle: 

• VSG Annual Meeting at AAS 2024 Seattle

Friday, March 15, 2024; 7:30pm - 9:30pm

Seattle Sheraton Hotel

Room: Seneca (4th Floor)

• AAS 2024 VSG Designated Panel 

The Heritage and Development Nexus in Contemporary Vietnam

Sponsored by Vietnam Studies Group

Thursday, March 14, 2024

7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Redwood A (2nd Floor, Sheraton Grand Seattle)

The interrelations between heritage and development provide opportunities as well as contradictions and dilemmas in terms of linking past, present and future in contemporary Asia. Ranging from infrastructure to tourism-oriented economies and evolving local identities, what we call the “heritage-development nexus” offers a unique entry-point to capture social and economic transformations from a cultural perspective. Vietnam offers an especially relevant case, as heritage – both tangible and intangible – plays an increasingly central role in shaping both national and local identity narratives amidst wider processes of social and economic change. Whereas much literature and public discourse have engaged with the spectacular and rapid transformations of Vietnamese society and economy, understanding of the equally significant cultural transformations and what we label the “heritage awakening” or boom in Vietnam remains in its early stages. This panel presents four case studies from Vietnam based on fine-grained ethnographic research with expert interviews and policy analysis. Ranging from site-specific field-studies to national policy level analysis, the panel seeks to unpack the heritage-development nexus in Vietnam by shedding light on the social and cultural complexity involved.

Organizers

Cam Hoang, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences

Larsen Bille Peter, University of Zurich

Chair

Larsen Bille Peter, University of Zurich

Discussant

Christina Schwenkel, University of California, Riverside

Presentations

Intangible Cultural Heritage and Development in Vietnam

Hien Thi Nguyen, Hanoi National University

After Superstition? Heritagization and the Re-Emergence of Xoe and then Ritual Processes

Cham Thi Phuong Nguyen, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences

Rethinking Heritage Agency and Marginality in Vietnam: Xoe between Cultural Assertion and Appropriation

Cam Hoang, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and Larsen Bille Peter, University of Zurich

Appropriating for Possession: Heritage, Competition, and Demonstration of Identity in a Sacred Place

Ha Thi Thu Do and Huong Dang Xuan Pham, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences

AAS 2023 Boston: 

• VSG Annual Meeting at AAS 2023 Boston

Friday, March 17, 2023; 7:30pm - 9:30pm

Boston Sheraton Hotel

Room: Public Garden (5th Floor)

• AAS 2023 VSG Designated Panel 

Saturday, March 18, 2023

2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Hynes Convention Center - Meeting Room 209 (Second Level) 

Sponsored by Vietnam Studies Group: 

"History, Community and Memory: The Vietnamese Past in the Vietnamese American Present"

In the past two decades, new generations of academics have grappled with the dynamic relationship between the Vietnamese diaspora and its homeland. A forthcoming edited volume seeks to provide a “framework for Vietnamese America studies” that “present[s] a new Vietnamese American historiography that began in South Vietnam [formally the Republic of Vietnam]”, pointing to the (former) nation with which many studies of transnational and diasporic Vietnamese implicitly interact. This panel seeks to make this connection explicit. To open, Tuong Vu will discuss the connections between Vietnamese and diasporic studies. These two fields rarely interact, yet fruitful exchanges can be made to enrich both. The panel then features three panelists who display this interaction between South Vietnam(ese history) and its diaspora. With a longue durée and transnational approach, Cindy Nguyen uncovers the significance and legacies of building postcolonial Vietnamese literary heritage through the Saigon national library. John Tran examines a particular intellectual who, in traversing geographical and cultural boundaries, helped to develop an RVN-centric cosmopolitanism that continues to service the Vietnamese diaspora today. Finally, Alvin Bui looks at competing diasporic Vietnamese and Vietnamese historicizations of an RVN-era film in the lead-up to and after its recent digitalization by the film producer’s grandnephew. As seen through our panel, the presence of the (South) Vietnamese past in the Vietnamese American present allows us to find the convergence of Vietnamese and diasporic Vietnamese studies.

    Organizers:

John Tran (University of Washington, Seattle)

Alvin K Bui (University of Washington, Seattle)

    Chair:

        Nu-Anh Tran (University of Connecticut)

    Discussants:

        Nu-Anh Tran (University of Connecticut)

        Thy Phu (University of Toronto, Scarborough)

Presentations:

• •  "Connecting Vietnamese and Diasporic Studies" - Tuong Vu, University of Oregon

  • "To Collect: The Decolonization of Libraries and Building Postcolonial Reading Publics, 1945-1965" - Cindy A. Nguyen, University of Ottawa

  • "Speaking the Nation: The Making of Vietnamese Language Aesthetics 1945 –1975" - John Tran, University of Washington, Seattle

  • "From Sài Gòn to Điện Biên Phủ (1968): Competing Vietnamese and Diasporic Vietnamese Memories of an RVN-Era Film" - Alvin K Bui, University of Washington, Seattle

• Seeking nominations for VSG Executive Committee

To nominate yourself or someone else, please email Tuan Huang, Chair, and Judith Henchy by January 15, 2023. 

Dues-paying members will vote for the executive committee in preparation for the 2023 VSG annual meeting in Boston.

Archive of Vietnam Papers Presented at AAS Conferences

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 2024 Annual Meeting

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 2023 Annual Meeting

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 2004 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2004 Session 6: Poetry as a Window on History and Change in Southeast Asia: Sponsored by COTSEAL ...

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 2003 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2003 Session 2: Who Finds the Stones to Cross the River? Emergent Social and Economic Inequalities in ...

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 2002 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2002 Session 5: Social Change in the Red River Delta: Results from the Vietnam Longitudinal Survey Organizer ...

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 2001 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2001 Session 6: Vietnam and the State in the 1950s: Arguments, Visions, Implementations Organizer: Shawn F. McHale ...

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 2000 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 2000 Session 18: "America is in the Heart": Postcolonial Hybridities in Constructions of Vietnamese and Filipino American ...

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 1999 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 1999 Session 18: Gender, Household, and Family in Northern Vietnam: New Studies Organizer and Chair: Jayne Werner ...

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 1998 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 1998 Session 15: Recasting the International History of the Indochina Wars (Sponsored by the Vietnam Studies Group ...

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 1997 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 1997 Session 17: Print Culture and the Construction of Identity in Japan, China and Vietnam Organizer: Shawn ...

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 1996 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 1996 Session 39: The State in Southeast Asia  Organizer and Chair: Craig J. Reynolds, Australian National University ...

Vietnam Paper Abstracts of the 1995 Annual Meeting 

Vietnam Related Panels and Paper Abstracts at the Association for Asian Studies Conference 1995 Session 12: Situating the Moment in Southeast Asia: Four Case Studies on Cultural Politics and Contemporary ...