Throughits reading of Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge, credited as the first Vietnamese American novel, t... more Throughits reading of Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge, credited as the first Vietnamese American novel, this article seeksto investigate the discourse of reconciliation or refugee settlement in the context of the changing US master narratives from Empire to Cold War 2.0. Itarguesthat Cao’s novel in its effort to register a South Vietnamese perspective reorients modern Vietnamese experiences in relation to the US sense of democracy and freedom and in the process challenges what Donald Pease calls the state fantasy of American exceptionalism in the US military intervention in Vietnam. What Cao’s novel achieves is to blur the boundary between nationalism and communism in its representation of the Vietnamese struggle for independence in its early stage and to humanize and rehabilitate the Vietcong soldier as a possibly assimilable “us” rather than as simply “them” in the realm of the other.
The author shares his experience in teaching and theorizing American Studies as a Fulbright schol... more The author shares his experience in teaching and theorizing American Studies as a Fulbright scholar in Singapore and Southeast Asia in 2017-18.
The authors introduce the status of transnational American studies and the importance of teaching... more The authors introduce the status of transnational American studies and the importance of teaching American studies around the globe.
Stanford University Press/Digital Humanities Project: The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, 2019
The study of the Chinese railroad workers in North America as an independent research project was... more The study of the Chinese railroad workers in North America as an independent research project was not launched until the turn of the twenty-first century in the People's Republic of China. Because of the limited opportunity to conduct research at US archives, museums, libraries, and historical sites, and also because of wars and social and political turmoil in China during the twentieth century-ranging from the war of resistance to the Japanese invasion (1937−1945) 1 to the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966−1976)-Chinese historians and social scientists today find little material culture to sustain any new understanding of what Michel de Certeau calls "the practice of everyday life" of these railroad workers, who were mostly living and working in the four (now expanded to five) counties of Guangdong Province before they left for North America in the 1860s. 2 The tremendous interest in the subject today in the media, publishing industry, and academic world reflects China's increasing willingness to participate in global affairs and a desire to improve United States−China relations. However, for the most part, Chinese scholars' study of these railroad workers has continued to depend on the primary research conducted by US-based historians and social scientists of material culture from the late nineteenth century to the present, research that historical documents unearthed in China have corroborated and supplemented. The significance of Chinese historiography on the subject lies more or less in the ways in which the Chinese historians and social scientists frame and reframe the narrative of the railroad workers; these framings reflect the ethos of specific cultural and historical junctures in contemporary China.
Rutgers University Press: Asian America: Forming New Communities, Expanding Boundaries, 2009
The author explores Chinese language web-based news outlets and their implications for cultural i... more The author explores Chinese language web-based news outlets and their implications for cultural identity and location.
The author shares his experience in teaching and theorizing Asian American literature at an insti... more The author shares his experience in teaching and theorizing Asian American literature at an institution of higher education in the American Midwest.
Page 1. Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context From Bruce Lee Abstract: The author ... c... more Page 1. Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context From Bruce Lee Abstract: The author ... culture Action as performance and performance as action have indeed become the language of the Kung Fu cinema. and society ...
Information technologies have profoundly transformed the world and people's conceptions of th... more Information technologies have profoundly transformed the world and people's conceptions of the world in the past two decades. Exploring the impact of information technologies on culture and society in terms of time and space, Manuel Castells argues that new information technologies have not only given rise to the phenomenon of "the space of flows," which supersedes the conventional meaning of the space of places, but have also destabilized the process of power formation and the foundation of traditional power structures, which have traditionally been mobilized more or less on the basis of geopolitical localities. The consequence of such technological transformation, Castells observes, is that "social meaning evaporates from places, and therefore from society, and becomes diluted and diffused in the reconstructed logic of a space of flows whose profile, origin, and ultimate purpose are unknown, even for many of the entities integrated in the network of exchanges" (Informational City 349). In a prediction of the future of uncertainty, which has been conditioned by the interaction between what he calls "the informational mode of development" and
Throughits reading of Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge, credited as the first Vietnamese American novel, t... more Throughits reading of Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge, credited as the first Vietnamese American novel, this article seeksto investigate the discourse of reconciliation or refugee settlement in the context of the changing US master narratives from Empire to Cold War 2.0. Itarguesthat Cao’s novel in its effort to register a South Vietnamese perspective reorients modern Vietnamese experiences in relation to the US sense of democracy and freedom and in the process challenges what Donald Pease calls the state fantasy of American exceptionalism in the US military intervention in Vietnam. What Cao’s novel achieves is to blur the boundary between nationalism and communism in its representation of the Vietnamese struggle for independence in its early stage and to humanize and rehabilitate the Vietcong soldier as a possibly assimilable “us” rather than as simply “them” in the realm of the other.
The author shares his experience in teaching and theorizing American Studies as a Fulbright schol... more The author shares his experience in teaching and theorizing American Studies as a Fulbright scholar in Singapore and Southeast Asia in 2017-18.
The authors introduce the status of transnational American studies and the importance of teaching... more The authors introduce the status of transnational American studies and the importance of teaching American studies around the globe.
Stanford University Press/Digital Humanities Project: The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, 2019
The study of the Chinese railroad workers in North America as an independent research project was... more The study of the Chinese railroad workers in North America as an independent research project was not launched until the turn of the twenty-first century in the People's Republic of China. Because of the limited opportunity to conduct research at US archives, museums, libraries, and historical sites, and also because of wars and social and political turmoil in China during the twentieth century-ranging from the war of resistance to the Japanese invasion (1937−1945) 1 to the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966−1976)-Chinese historians and social scientists today find little material culture to sustain any new understanding of what Michel de Certeau calls "the practice of everyday life" of these railroad workers, who were mostly living and working in the four (now expanded to five) counties of Guangdong Province before they left for North America in the 1860s. 2 The tremendous interest in the subject today in the media, publishing industry, and academic world reflects China's increasing willingness to participate in global affairs and a desire to improve United States−China relations. However, for the most part, Chinese scholars' study of these railroad workers has continued to depend on the primary research conducted by US-based historians and social scientists of material culture from the late nineteenth century to the present, research that historical documents unearthed in China have corroborated and supplemented. The significance of Chinese historiography on the subject lies more or less in the ways in which the Chinese historians and social scientists frame and reframe the narrative of the railroad workers; these framings reflect the ethos of specific cultural and historical junctures in contemporary China.
Rutgers University Press: Asian America: Forming New Communities, Expanding Boundaries, 2009
The author explores Chinese language web-based news outlets and their implications for cultural i... more The author explores Chinese language web-based news outlets and their implications for cultural identity and location.
The author shares his experience in teaching and theorizing Asian American literature at an insti... more The author shares his experience in teaching and theorizing Asian American literature at an institution of higher education in the American Midwest.
Page 1. Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context From Bruce Lee Abstract: The author ... c... more Page 1. Reading the Kung Fu Film in an American Context From Bruce Lee Abstract: The author ... culture Action as performance and performance as action have indeed become the language of the Kung Fu cinema. and society ...
Information technologies have profoundly transformed the world and people's conceptions of th... more Information technologies have profoundly transformed the world and people's conceptions of the world in the past two decades. Exploring the impact of information technologies on culture and society in terms of time and space, Manuel Castells argues that new information technologies have not only given rise to the phenomenon of "the space of flows," which supersedes the conventional meaning of the space of places, but have also destabilized the process of power formation and the foundation of traditional power structures, which have traditionally been mobilized more or less on the basis of geopolitical localities. The consequence of such technological transformation, Castells observes, is that "social meaning evaporates from places, and therefore from society, and becomes diluted and diffused in the reconstructed logic of a space of flows whose profile, origin, and ultimate purpose are unknown, even for many of the entities integrated in the network of exchanges" (Informational City 349). In a prediction of the future of uncertainty, which has been conditioned by the interaction between what he calls "the informational mode of development" and
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