While academics can often be found criticizing university administrators for only focusing on “da... more While academics can often be found criticizing university administrators for only focusing on “data,” “numbers” or “metrics,” as if such people have become so focused on the “infalible facts” that numbers reveal that they can appreciate little else, when we actually look at the way that data is used for such purposes as evaluating the performance of scholars, or in university rankings, it is actually quite astonishing to see how unsophisticated the use of numbers can be.
Follow Zargon and Zarga as they make this point, and save the universe in the process. . .
Tianxia in Comparative Perspectives: Alternative Models for a Possible Planetary Order, 2023
This chapter challenges Zhao Tingyang’s theorization of Tianxia, as well as the ideas of Decoloni... more This chapter challenges Zhao Tingyang’s theorization of Tianxia, as well as the ideas of Decoloniality scholars, to argue that in late imperial Vietnam we can find precisely the kinds of divisive and oppressive categories for organizing society that the above scholars argue were uniquely Western.
A form of Sinology emerged in Vietnam in the early twentieth century during the period of colonia... more A form of Sinology emerged in Vietnam in the early twentieth century during the period of colonial rule as Western learning came to replace the traditional curriculum of the Confucian classics. At first, scholars sought to preserve traditional learning by translating Confucian and Buddhist texts into the Vietnamese vernacular. Then in the 1930s and 1940s, scholars produced works on Chinese history, philosophy, and literature that engaged with the works of modern scholars from China and the West. The development of this body of Sinological scholarship was then disrupted by periods of revolution and war. This article traces the development of Sinology in Vietnam through these periods up to the present.
Chinese sources have played a very important role in the writing of early Southeast Asian history... more Chinese sources have played a very important role in the writing of early Southeast Asian history. However, scholars have struggled to understand the information in those sources and over the past century, there have been countless different interpretations that have been put forward. In this paper, we revisit the Chinese sources on early Southeast Asian history and do not simply offer a new interpretation, but also attempt to demonstrate why previous scholarship has been inaccurate. In particular, previous generations of scholars failed to recognize the way that Chinese scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries distorted information about Southeast Asia by (arbitrarily) equating historical placenames with the names of contemporary kingdoms. In doing so, they made false connections between placenames, thereby leading later scholars astray. In this paper, we return to the earliest sources and build our knowledge from scratch. What emerges is a new picture of early Southeast Asian history and one that is free of the many textual problems and contradictions that scholars have struggled with over the past century.
China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies, 2022
Srivijaya, a supposed thalassocracy based on the island of Sumatra, is believed by scholars to ha... more Srivijaya, a supposed thalassocracy based on the island of Sumatra, is believed by scholars to have played a central role in the trade and politics of Southeast Asia from roughly the seventh to fourteenth centuries. Much of the evidence for Srivijaya's history comes from Chinese sources, and in this two-part article we demonstrate that some of the Chinese sources that have been employed for writing the history of "Srivijaya" are about Cambodia, that is, Angkor. More specifically, scholars have argued that a kingdom referred to in Chinese sources as "Sanfoqi" was "Srivijaya," and in this paper we examine the information about Sanfoqi in the fourteenth century in the Ming shilu against information in the Cambodian and Siamese chronicles to demonstrate that Sanfoqi was Angkor. In the process, we develop an entirely new history of the final days of that once powerful polity.
Tóm tắt: Năm 2020, khi chúng tôi viết phần tóm tắt này, đó là lúc các học giả ở Trung Quốc đang n... more Tóm tắt: Năm 2020, khi chúng tôi viết phần tóm tắt này, đó là lúc các học giả ở Trung Quốc đang nỗ lực tìm cách chứng minh rằng nhóm tộc Choang là hậu duệ của một tộc người cổ đại được gọi là “Luoyue”. Trước đó không lâu, vào thập niên 1950, một vài học giả Việt Nam đã nghiên cứu nghiêm túc không kém để chứng minh rằng người Việt cũng là hậu duệ của tộc người “Luoyue”, trong tiếng Việt gọi là “Lạc Việt”. Trong cả hai trường hợp, những khẳng định tổ tiên từ người Lạc Việt/Luoyue này là mới. Đối với cả đôi bên, đây là một trong những nỗ lực nhằm xây dựng một căn tính có thể thống nhất một nhóm người và cung cấp cho họ cảm giác rằng họ có một cội nguồn lịch sử sâu xa. Nỗ lực này đã thành công ở Việt Nam. Trong trường hợp của Trung Quốc, đó là một nỗ lực vẫn đang được tiến hành. Trong bài viết này, chúng tôi xem xét các “vị tổ tưởng tượng” này và cân nhắc xem các căn tính này sẽ tác động như thế nào đến cuộc sống của người dân ở cả Việt Nam và Trung Quốc trong những năm tới.
Fieldwork and the Self: Changing Research Styles in Southeast Asia, 2021
While historians do not usually engage in fieldwork, they do engage with the 'work' of various 'f... more While historians do not usually engage in fieldwork, they do engage with the 'work' of various 'fields'. In the case of my own research, over the past 30 years I have engaged with the work of the fields of Chinese history, world history, Vietnamese history, Southeast Asian history, Southeast Asian studies and Asian studies. Those engagements have taken place over the course of a period of decline in interest in Asian studies, and of a crisis in area studies, particularly in the United States where I have studied and worked. In this chapter I discuss the various engagements that I have had with the above fields, but I focus primarily on my work in and with the fields of premodern Vietnamese history and Southeast Asian history. Further, I attempt to explain how my 'location' between generations, area studies regions and a digital divide has led me to develop ideas about certain problematic issues affecting some of the above fields that have been largely overlooked. These include the following: baby boomer lite politics, weak linguistic foundations, a resistance to metrics, a reluctance to engage with and be critical of scholars in Southeast Asia, and an unwillingness or inability to address the issues outside of the intellectual world of Southeast Asian studies that are contributing to the discipline's decline.
Vietnam at the Vanguard New Perspectives Across Time, Space, and Community, 2021
As we write this abstract, it is 2020 and there are scholars in China hard at work seeking to dem... more As we write this abstract, it is 2020 and there are scholars in China hard at work seeking to demonstrate that the Zhuang ethnic group are descended from ancient people known as the "Luoyue." Not all that long ago, in the 1950s, certain Vietnamese scholars worked equally hard to demonstrate that the Vietnamese were descended from the very same "Luoyue" people, pronounced in Vietnamese as "Lạc Việt." In both cases, these claims to ancestry from the Lạc Việt/Luoyue were new. They were also both parts of efforts to construct an identity that could unify a group of people and provide them with a sense that their group possessed deep historical roots. This effort has succeeded in Vietnam. In the case of China, it is an effort that is still underway. In this paper, we examine these two "competing imagined ancestries" and ponder how these identity projects will impact the lives of people in both Vietnam and China in the years ahead.
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2020
In recent years, the discipline of Asian Studies has struggled to adapt to a changing world and h... more In recent years, the discipline of Asian Studies has struggled to adapt to a changing world and has seen a decline in student interest. A discourse about this issue has emerged that attributes this "crisis" in Asian Studies to various supposed faults in its forms of knowledge production, and that looks with hope to Asia for new forms of knowledge about the region. This paper takes issue with this discourse by employing an autoethnographic narrative to examine the ways in which mobility has affected the discipline of Asian Studies. It traces a path, followed by this author and many others, from an affective fascination with a foreign society to the professional production of knowledge. It then examines how this professional knowledge production has transformed under the influence of different forms of mobility (state-sponsored, private, and global digital), transformations that have led to the current "crisis" in Asian Studies.
This paper examines an institution called Review and Selection, which
facilitated the tasks of ta... more This paper examines an institution called Review and Selection, which facilitated the tasks of tax collection and military conscription in early modern Vietnam. Through a comparative examination of this institution’s history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Lê/Trịnh realm of Đàng Ngoài in the north and the Nguyễn domain of Đàng Trong in the south, this paper challenges ideas in extant English-language scholarship that claim that Đàng Trong was less bureaucratic, less Confucian, and more militarized than that of the Lê north. In the process, it offers some new characterizations of early modern Vietnam.
This is a short reflection piece on the transition to online instruction that is taking place at ... more This is a short reflection piece on the transition to online instruction that is taking place at many universities around the globe.
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 2020
Until recently, virtually all information about the past in Vietnam was produced by scholars work... more Until recently, virtually all information about the past in Vietnam was produced by scholars working for the state, mainly university professors, and published in print media. In recent years, however, private individuals have begun to make use of the Internet to offer new perspectives on the Vietnamese past, and in some cases to print their work. Some of these amateur historians have now produced a new narrative about Vietnamese prehistory. This narrative presents an extremely positive view of the history of the ancient ancestors of the Vietnamese, seeing them as essentially the founders of East Asian civilisation. While some aspects of this narrative were first proposed by South Vietnamese philosopher Lương Kim Định in the 1960s, amateur Vietnamese historians in the diaspora around the turn of the 21st century added what they argued were “scientific” findings of “international” scholars to this narrative. Finally, scholars in Vietnam accessed these ideas through the Internet and synthesised them with the works of scholars working in Vietnam. This spread of ideas from South Vietnam into the diaspora and then back to Vietnam via the Internet offers a fascinating insight into the ways in which communication in the Digital Age has enabled some authors from the previously divided worlds of Vietnam and the diaspora to find common ground to promote a nationalistic vision of the distant past out of a shared desire to create a strong cultural and philosophical foundation that will enable Vietnamese to thrive in the global age.
This paper examines an institution called Review and Selection, which facilitated the tasks of ta... more This paper examines an institution called Review and Selection, which facilitated the tasks of tax collection and military conscription in early modern Vietnam. Through a comparative examination of this institution’s history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Lê/Trịnh realm of Đàng Ngoài in the north and the Nguyễn domain of Đàng Trong in the south, this paper challenges ideas in extant English-language scholarship that claim that Đàng Trong was less bureaucratic, less Confucian, and more militarized than that of the Lê north. In the process, it offers some new characterizations of early modern Vietnam.
Ever since John Smail called on scholars in the early sixties to leave behind the Eurocentric wri... more Ever since John Smail called on scholars in the early sixties to leave behind the Eurocentric writings of colonial-era historians and create an "autonomous history" for Southeast Asia, historians have been faced with a major conundrum: how to write about the past from a "native" perspective when there are few (if any) extant, indigenous sources.1 Scholars have thus done their best to write accounts based on the more numerous Western records, that nonetheless give primacy to the local perspective. While such works invariably still receive criticism, they are nonetheless becoming ever more sophisticated.
As we write this abstract, it is 2020 and there are scholars in China hard at work seeking to dem... more As we write this abstract, it is 2020 and there are scholars in China hard at work seeking to demonstrate that the Zhuang ethnic group are descended from ancient people known as the “Luoyue.” Not all that long ago, in the 1950s, certain Vietnamese scholars worked equally hard to demonstrate that the Vietnamese were descended from the very same “Luoyue” people, pronounced in Vietnamese as “Lạc Việt.” In both cases, these claims to ancestry from the Lạc Việt/Luoyue were new. They were also both parts of efforts to construct an identity that could unify a group of people and provide them with a sense that their group possessed deep historical roots. This effort has succeeded in Vietnam. In the case of China, it is an effort that is still underway. In this paper, we examine these two “competing imagined ancestries” and ponder how these identity projects will impact the lives of people in both Vietnam and China in the years ahead. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-5055-0_6 Keywords Lạc Việt Zhuang Vietnamese Imagined ancestries Identity projects
While academics can often be found criticizing university administrators for only focusing on “da... more While academics can often be found criticizing university administrators for only focusing on “data,” “numbers” or “metrics,” as if such people have become so focused on the “infalible facts” that numbers reveal that they can appreciate little else, when we actually look at the way that data is used for such purposes as evaluating the performance of scholars, or in university rankings, it is actually quite astonishing to see how unsophisticated the use of numbers can be.
Follow Zargon and Zarga as they make this point, and save the universe in the process. . .
Tianxia in Comparative Perspectives: Alternative Models for a Possible Planetary Order, 2023
This chapter challenges Zhao Tingyang’s theorization of Tianxia, as well as the ideas of Decoloni... more This chapter challenges Zhao Tingyang’s theorization of Tianxia, as well as the ideas of Decoloniality scholars, to argue that in late imperial Vietnam we can find precisely the kinds of divisive and oppressive categories for organizing society that the above scholars argue were uniquely Western.
A form of Sinology emerged in Vietnam in the early twentieth century during the period of colonia... more A form of Sinology emerged in Vietnam in the early twentieth century during the period of colonial rule as Western learning came to replace the traditional curriculum of the Confucian classics. At first, scholars sought to preserve traditional learning by translating Confucian and Buddhist texts into the Vietnamese vernacular. Then in the 1930s and 1940s, scholars produced works on Chinese history, philosophy, and literature that engaged with the works of modern scholars from China and the West. The development of this body of Sinological scholarship was then disrupted by periods of revolution and war. This article traces the development of Sinology in Vietnam through these periods up to the present.
Chinese sources have played a very important role in the writing of early Southeast Asian history... more Chinese sources have played a very important role in the writing of early Southeast Asian history. However, scholars have struggled to understand the information in those sources and over the past century, there have been countless different interpretations that have been put forward. In this paper, we revisit the Chinese sources on early Southeast Asian history and do not simply offer a new interpretation, but also attempt to demonstrate why previous scholarship has been inaccurate. In particular, previous generations of scholars failed to recognize the way that Chinese scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries distorted information about Southeast Asia by (arbitrarily) equating historical placenames with the names of contemporary kingdoms. In doing so, they made false connections between placenames, thereby leading later scholars astray. In this paper, we return to the earliest sources and build our knowledge from scratch. What emerges is a new picture of early Southeast Asian history and one that is free of the many textual problems and contradictions that scholars have struggled with over the past century.
China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies, 2022
Srivijaya, a supposed thalassocracy based on the island of Sumatra, is believed by scholars to ha... more Srivijaya, a supposed thalassocracy based on the island of Sumatra, is believed by scholars to have played a central role in the trade and politics of Southeast Asia from roughly the seventh to fourteenth centuries. Much of the evidence for Srivijaya's history comes from Chinese sources, and in this two-part article we demonstrate that some of the Chinese sources that have been employed for writing the history of "Srivijaya" are about Cambodia, that is, Angkor. More specifically, scholars have argued that a kingdom referred to in Chinese sources as "Sanfoqi" was "Srivijaya," and in this paper we examine the information about Sanfoqi in the fourteenth century in the Ming shilu against information in the Cambodian and Siamese chronicles to demonstrate that Sanfoqi was Angkor. In the process, we develop an entirely new history of the final days of that once powerful polity.
Tóm tắt: Năm 2020, khi chúng tôi viết phần tóm tắt này, đó là lúc các học giả ở Trung Quốc đang n... more Tóm tắt: Năm 2020, khi chúng tôi viết phần tóm tắt này, đó là lúc các học giả ở Trung Quốc đang nỗ lực tìm cách chứng minh rằng nhóm tộc Choang là hậu duệ của một tộc người cổ đại được gọi là “Luoyue”. Trước đó không lâu, vào thập niên 1950, một vài học giả Việt Nam đã nghiên cứu nghiêm túc không kém để chứng minh rằng người Việt cũng là hậu duệ của tộc người “Luoyue”, trong tiếng Việt gọi là “Lạc Việt”. Trong cả hai trường hợp, những khẳng định tổ tiên từ người Lạc Việt/Luoyue này là mới. Đối với cả đôi bên, đây là một trong những nỗ lực nhằm xây dựng một căn tính có thể thống nhất một nhóm người và cung cấp cho họ cảm giác rằng họ có một cội nguồn lịch sử sâu xa. Nỗ lực này đã thành công ở Việt Nam. Trong trường hợp của Trung Quốc, đó là một nỗ lực vẫn đang được tiến hành. Trong bài viết này, chúng tôi xem xét các “vị tổ tưởng tượng” này và cân nhắc xem các căn tính này sẽ tác động như thế nào đến cuộc sống của người dân ở cả Việt Nam và Trung Quốc trong những năm tới.
Fieldwork and the Self: Changing Research Styles in Southeast Asia, 2021
While historians do not usually engage in fieldwork, they do engage with the 'work' of various 'f... more While historians do not usually engage in fieldwork, they do engage with the 'work' of various 'fields'. In the case of my own research, over the past 30 years I have engaged with the work of the fields of Chinese history, world history, Vietnamese history, Southeast Asian history, Southeast Asian studies and Asian studies. Those engagements have taken place over the course of a period of decline in interest in Asian studies, and of a crisis in area studies, particularly in the United States where I have studied and worked. In this chapter I discuss the various engagements that I have had with the above fields, but I focus primarily on my work in and with the fields of premodern Vietnamese history and Southeast Asian history. Further, I attempt to explain how my 'location' between generations, area studies regions and a digital divide has led me to develop ideas about certain problematic issues affecting some of the above fields that have been largely overlooked. These include the following: baby boomer lite politics, weak linguistic foundations, a resistance to metrics, a reluctance to engage with and be critical of scholars in Southeast Asia, and an unwillingness or inability to address the issues outside of the intellectual world of Southeast Asian studies that are contributing to the discipline's decline.
Vietnam at the Vanguard New Perspectives Across Time, Space, and Community, 2021
As we write this abstract, it is 2020 and there are scholars in China hard at work seeking to dem... more As we write this abstract, it is 2020 and there are scholars in China hard at work seeking to demonstrate that the Zhuang ethnic group are descended from ancient people known as the "Luoyue." Not all that long ago, in the 1950s, certain Vietnamese scholars worked equally hard to demonstrate that the Vietnamese were descended from the very same "Luoyue" people, pronounced in Vietnamese as "Lạc Việt." In both cases, these claims to ancestry from the Lạc Việt/Luoyue were new. They were also both parts of efforts to construct an identity that could unify a group of people and provide them with a sense that their group possessed deep historical roots. This effort has succeeded in Vietnam. In the case of China, it is an effort that is still underway. In this paper, we examine these two "competing imagined ancestries" and ponder how these identity projects will impact the lives of people in both Vietnam and China in the years ahead.
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2020
In recent years, the discipline of Asian Studies has struggled to adapt to a changing world and h... more In recent years, the discipline of Asian Studies has struggled to adapt to a changing world and has seen a decline in student interest. A discourse about this issue has emerged that attributes this "crisis" in Asian Studies to various supposed faults in its forms of knowledge production, and that looks with hope to Asia for new forms of knowledge about the region. This paper takes issue with this discourse by employing an autoethnographic narrative to examine the ways in which mobility has affected the discipline of Asian Studies. It traces a path, followed by this author and many others, from an affective fascination with a foreign society to the professional production of knowledge. It then examines how this professional knowledge production has transformed under the influence of different forms of mobility (state-sponsored, private, and global digital), transformations that have led to the current "crisis" in Asian Studies.
This paper examines an institution called Review and Selection, which
facilitated the tasks of ta... more This paper examines an institution called Review and Selection, which facilitated the tasks of tax collection and military conscription in early modern Vietnam. Through a comparative examination of this institution’s history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Lê/Trịnh realm of Đàng Ngoài in the north and the Nguyễn domain of Đàng Trong in the south, this paper challenges ideas in extant English-language scholarship that claim that Đàng Trong was less bureaucratic, less Confucian, and more militarized than that of the Lê north. In the process, it offers some new characterizations of early modern Vietnam.
This is a short reflection piece on the transition to online instruction that is taking place at ... more This is a short reflection piece on the transition to online instruction that is taking place at many universities around the globe.
International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 2020
Until recently, virtually all information about the past in Vietnam was produced by scholars work... more Until recently, virtually all information about the past in Vietnam was produced by scholars working for the state, mainly university professors, and published in print media. In recent years, however, private individuals have begun to make use of the Internet to offer new perspectives on the Vietnamese past, and in some cases to print their work. Some of these amateur historians have now produced a new narrative about Vietnamese prehistory. This narrative presents an extremely positive view of the history of the ancient ancestors of the Vietnamese, seeing them as essentially the founders of East Asian civilisation. While some aspects of this narrative were first proposed by South Vietnamese philosopher Lương Kim Định in the 1960s, amateur Vietnamese historians in the diaspora around the turn of the 21st century added what they argued were “scientific” findings of “international” scholars to this narrative. Finally, scholars in Vietnam accessed these ideas through the Internet and synthesised them with the works of scholars working in Vietnam. This spread of ideas from South Vietnam into the diaspora and then back to Vietnam via the Internet offers a fascinating insight into the ways in which communication in the Digital Age has enabled some authors from the previously divided worlds of Vietnam and the diaspora to find common ground to promote a nationalistic vision of the distant past out of a shared desire to create a strong cultural and philosophical foundation that will enable Vietnamese to thrive in the global age.
This paper examines an institution called Review and Selection, which facilitated the tasks of ta... more This paper examines an institution called Review and Selection, which facilitated the tasks of tax collection and military conscription in early modern Vietnam. Through a comparative examination of this institution’s history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Lê/Trịnh realm of Đàng Ngoài in the north and the Nguyễn domain of Đàng Trong in the south, this paper challenges ideas in extant English-language scholarship that claim that Đàng Trong was less bureaucratic, less Confucian, and more militarized than that of the Lê north. In the process, it offers some new characterizations of early modern Vietnam.
Ever since John Smail called on scholars in the early sixties to leave behind the Eurocentric wri... more Ever since John Smail called on scholars in the early sixties to leave behind the Eurocentric writings of colonial-era historians and create an "autonomous history" for Southeast Asia, historians have been faced with a major conundrum: how to write about the past from a "native" perspective when there are few (if any) extant, indigenous sources.1 Scholars have thus done their best to write accounts based on the more numerous Western records, that nonetheless give primacy to the local perspective. While such works invariably still receive criticism, they are nonetheless becoming ever more sophisticated.
As we write this abstract, it is 2020 and there are scholars in China hard at work seeking to dem... more As we write this abstract, it is 2020 and there are scholars in China hard at work seeking to demonstrate that the Zhuang ethnic group are descended from ancient people known as the “Luoyue.” Not all that long ago, in the 1950s, certain Vietnamese scholars worked equally hard to demonstrate that the Vietnamese were descended from the very same “Luoyue” people, pronounced in Vietnamese as “Lạc Việt.” In both cases, these claims to ancestry from the Lạc Việt/Luoyue were new. They were also both parts of efforts to construct an identity that could unify a group of people and provide them with a sense that their group possessed deep historical roots. This effort has succeeded in Vietnam. In the case of China, it is an effort that is still underway. In this paper, we examine these two “competing imagined ancestries” and ponder how these identity projects will impact the lives of people in both Vietnam and China in the years ahead. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-5055-0_6 Keywords Lạc Việt Zhuang Vietnamese Imagined ancestries Identity projects
The Collaboration Project between Engaging With Vietnam and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies T h... more The Collaboration Project between Engaging With Vietnam and the Journal of Vietnamese Studies T his set of articles inaugurates a new collaboration between the Journal of Vietnamese Studies and Engaging With Vietnam-a special issue devoted to work from contributors involved in the annual Engaging With Vietnam: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue conference series.
This article examines a change in how members of the educated elite in Vietnam viewed their kingd... more This article examines a change in how members of the educated elite in Vietnam viewed their kingdom's place in the world. It argues that, prior to the twentieth century, Vietnamese scholars saw their kingdom as being connected to, or reliant on, the empire to its north, which we now refer to as " China. " In particular, Vietnamese literati believed that moral virtue from the North had spread southward over time and enabled the Southern Kingdom, as they sometimes called their land, to emerge. The flow of geomantic energy from north to south played a similar role. In 1908, however, a reformist scholar named Lương Trúc Đàm published a geography textbook, Geography of the Southern Kingdom (Nam Quốc địa dư), that disconnected the Southern Kingdom from any form of reliance on the North. In this work, Đàm also sought to nurture in his readers patriotic feelings toward the Southern Kingdom. In so doing, Đàm contributed to the creation of what historian Thongchai Winichakul has referred to as a " geo-body, " an identifiable and separate geographical entity for which students are taught to develop patriotic emotions.
This is UNEDITED and ORIGINAL text from Tạ Chí Đại Trường that he wrote when he reviewed the manu... more This is UNEDITED and ORIGINAL text from Tạ Chí Đại Trường that he wrote when he reviewed the manuscript version of an article I wrote. In that draft version, I made a careless mistake about the date when the Lĩnh Nam chích quái was publishes. I fixed that mistake in the text, so when an English translation was made of these comments, that section was omitted. I'm leaving it here, however, so that readers can see more of Tạ Chí Đại Trường's knowledge about Vietnamese history.
I previously asked (through a mutual acquaintance) for permission from Tạ Chí Đại Trường to make these comments available. I was told that he approved, but I never got around to doing so. Sadly, I recently learned of his passing, and therefore in his honor, and out of sincere gratitude for his comments, I am making them available here now.
When people write about the history of Southeast Asian Studies (or the history of scholarship on ... more When people write about the history of Southeast Asian Studies (or the history of scholarship on Southeast Asian history), they often state that there were biases in the work of colonial-era scholars (Euro-centric, paternalistic, etc.), but similar characterizations are not made about scholarship produced during the period of area studies (1960s-the present). In fact, there have been clear biases in area studies scholarship pertaining to Southeast Asian history and that is the topic that this video addresses.
In this Vlog we talk about a book called The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian St... more In this Vlog we talk about a book called The End of Concern: Maoist China, Activism, and Asian Studies (Duke 2017) by Fabio Lanza and think about the history of (Southeast Asian) Studies/History.
Why is the idea that the Vietnamese emperor was the "Son of Heaven" (Thiên tử 天子) of such limited... more Why is the idea that the Vietnamese emperor was the "Son of Heaven" (Thiên tử 天子) of such limited importance in scholarship on Vietnamese history? This video has the answers!!
Plenty has been written about Confucianism in Vietnam, but I find that the studies to date (parti... more Plenty has been written about Confucianism in Vietnam, but I find that the studies to date (particularly those in English) have generally not examined the types of texts that can really give us the clearest understanding of the role of Confucianism in the Vietnamese past.
In this video we look at one text that can do this. . . and we also talk about zombies and what can cause the universe to explode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1zlIfpcSgk
This vlog introduces and discusses a 1969 film from North Vietnam called “The Front is Calling” (... more This vlog introduces and discusses a 1969 film from North Vietnam called “The Front is Calling” (Tiền Tuyến Gọi). https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=732&v=CS2rYAPGKiI
Senior Professor Phan Lê Hà, from the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education (SHBIE) at U... more Senior Professor Phan Lê Hà, from the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education (SHBIE) at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, sat down for a talk about her Institute of Asian Studies (IAS; ias.ubd.edu.bn) Wednesday Seminar presentation on “Higher Education, English, and the idea of ‘the West’: Globalizing and Encountering a Global South Regional University.” For more on her talk, please see the following: http://ias.ubd.edu.bn/seminar-on-the-...
Lời Giới Thiệu: Trong di bút của Tạ Chí Đại Trường phổ biến cuối tháng Ba năm 2016, cố sử gia kể ... more Lời Giới Thiệu: Trong di bút của Tạ Chí Đại Trường phổ biến cuối tháng Ba năm 2016, cố sử gia kể lại những thăng trầm cá nhân và nghề nghiệp cùng hiện trạng bi quan trong ngành sử học Việt Nam. Tạ Chí Đại Trường nhắc đến Liam Kelley – giáo sư Mỹ ngành sử học Đông Nam Á tại Đại học Hawaii ở Manoa – khi đề cập đến những tranh cãi chung quanh triết gia Kim Định, người từ nửa thế kỷ trước đã cho rằng nền văn minh Trung Hoa thực ra phát xuất từ giòng giống Lạc Việt nông thôn. Da Màu liên lạc với Giáo sư Kelley qua blog của ông là Le Minh Khai's SEAsian History Blog và đã được giáo sư chấp thuận cho phỏng vấn. Kéo dài trong ba tuần lễ, cuộc trao đổi được thực hiện qua email trong nguyên văn Anh ngữ rồi sau đó dịch sang Việt ngữ. Giáo sư Kelley rất cởi mở, nhẫn nại, và dành cho Da Màu nhiều nhận xét độc đáo trong những câu trả lời của ông. Giáo sư Liam Kelley tốt nghiệp đại học Dartmouth với bằng cử nhân văn chương và ngữ học Nga năm 1989; bằng cao học và tiến sĩ lịch sử Trung quốc năm 1996 và 2001 tại đại học Hawaii ở Manoa. Hiện ông là đồng chủ biên của tờ Journal of Vietnamese Studies. Những khảo cứu và giảng huấn của ông chú trọng vào lịch sử vùng Đông Nam Á và lịch sử Việt Nam thời tiền hiện đại (trước thời kỳ đô hộ Pháp). Ông đã xuất bản một quyển sách về thơ đi sứ, đồng biên tập một tác phẩm về những biên cương miền Nam của Trung Hoa, những bài viết về những huyền thoại và truyền thống được kết tạo trong thời trung cổ tại Việt Nam, và sự phát hiện của tinh thần dân tộc Việt cùng truyền thống giáng bút vào đầu thế kỷ 20. Giáo sư Kelley cũng vừa hoàn tất bản dịch Anh ngữ về ngoại kỷ của Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư và Khâm định Việt sử thông giám cương mục.
People pursue interests and careers for various reasons, but one is because they think that what ... more People pursue interests and careers for various reasons, but one is because they think that what they are doing is cool. In this video we argue that area studies/Asian Studies has lost its coolness, and we suggest one way to bring that coolness back.
The Humanities aren’t doing very well at universities, but “YouTube University” is doing great!! ... more The Humanities aren’t doing very well at universities, but “YouTube University” is doing great!! What does that mean for the future? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvGRAOJ-prU&t=421s
This video contains a discussion about how innovation in some sectors and the lack of innovation ... more This video contains a discussion about how innovation in some sectors and the lack of innovation in others is transforming the academic landscape and contributing to the decline of area studies.
This paper was presented at the “Beyond Teleologies: Alternative Voices and Histories in Colonial... more This paper was presented at the “Beyond Teleologies: Alternative Voices and Histories in Colonial Viet Nam” Conference at the University of Washington, March 2007. It is incomplete, and there are probably typos and other mistakes in it, but I have no idea when I will return to it, so until then I am making it available to people to read and cite.
The above video is meant to introduce a new book – Erica Fox Brindley’s Ancient China and the Yue... more The above video is meant to introduce a new book – Erica Fox Brindley’s Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c. 400 BCE-50 CE (Cambridge, 2015) – but it is also an audio-visual reflection on how scholarship and academic ideas change and develop over time. (from Le Minh Khai/Liam C. Kelley, University of Hawaii at Manoa).
In this short video, we offer a very brief introduction of "Ancient China and the Yue: Perception... more In this short video, we offer a very brief introduction of "Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern frontier, c. 400 BCE-50 CE" by Erica Fox Brindley, published by Cambridge University Press, 2015.
There are different types of knowledge that have been (and continue to be) produced about Southea... more There are different types of knowledge that have been (and continue to be) produced about Southeast Asia, from area studies knowledge produced in places like North America, Australia and the UK, to nationalistic and ASEAN-focused scholarship produced in the region, to what I would call “academic knowledge” that is produced by scholars (mainly those studying/working in “the West” but who could be from anywhere) who focus on addressing issues in their respective academic disciplines rather than contributing to the understanding of a geographic area (as area studies and ASEAN-focused scholars do) or a nation (as nationalistic scholars do).
These different forms of knowledge exist in tension with each other, and this talk looks at ways to bridge the divides between these different ways of knowing Southeast Asia.
This is a talk that I gave for an event that I could not attend. I have edited out the parts at the beginning and the end that refer to the event, and am sharing the rest for anyone interested in this topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Az8toh7hk
This video contains some more discussion of some of the conclusions that Đào Duy Anh reaches in h... more This video contains some more discussion of some of the conclusions that Đào Duy Anh reaches in his 1938 work, An Historical Outline of Vietnamese Culture (Việt Nam văn hóa sử cương).
This video contains a discussion of some of the conclusions that Đào Duy Anh reaches in his 1938 ... more This video contains a discussion of some of the conclusions that Đào Duy Anh reaches in his 1938 work, An Historical Outline of Vietnamese Culture (Việt Nam văn hóa sử cương).
Lê Minh Khải is again transported back in time and forced to answer questions about Vietnamese hi... more Lê Minh Khải is again transported back in time and forced to answer questions about Vietnamese historian Đào Duy Anh’s scholarship. This time he ends up in Hong Kong and is asked about Đào Duy Anh’s approach to Marxist historiography.
This short video is my first attempt, together with Le Minh Khai, to disrupt and trouble well-est... more This short video is my first attempt, together with Le Minh Khai, to disrupt and trouble well-established scholarly misconceptions that have become 'truths' and 'common knowledge' across various fields. We use the short films as the initial springboard to discuss and understand limitations in scholarship that have been resulted from such misconceptions. We hope these films also offer space for knowledge engagement and scholarship extension that are not bound to these seemingly 'convenient' misconceptions.
In this section, together with Liam Kelley (Le Minh Khai), I attempt to present academic ideas an... more In this section, together with Liam Kelley (Le Minh Khai), I attempt to present academic ideas and knowledge in multiple forms including short films, talks, and texts. I highlight other scholars' academic endeavours, and in so doing engage in the production of knowledge in several languages.
I will first introduce to you our series of videos made about a young scholar in Vietnam - Tran Quang Duc (Trần Quang Đức) - whose multilingual capabilities are admirable, and whose academic ideas, pedagogy as well as research approaches to scholarship are innovative and cutting-edged.
Engaging with Vietnam Conference website: www.engagingwithvietnam.net
Engaging with Vietnam YouT... more Engaging with Vietnam Conference website: www.engagingwithvietnam.net
Proboscis Production presents a conversation with independent scholar Trần Quang Đức on calligrap... more Proboscis Production presents a conversation with independent scholar Trần Quang Đức on calligraphy, young people, social media, and the spirit of poetry in old Vietnam. Enjoy!
Proboscis Production presents its first short film that features a conversation about Art and His... more Proboscis Production presents its first short film that features a conversation about Art and History with artist Nguyen Phuong Linh.
Proboscis Production is Liam Kelley and Phan Le Ha
"Beyond Dichotomies: Vietnam from Multiple Perspectives", 2018
This is the full program of the 10th Engaging With Vietnam Conference "Beyond Dichotomies: Vietna... more This is the full program of the 10th Engaging With Vietnam Conference "Beyond Dichotomies: Vietnam from Multiple Perspectives"
15-21 December 2018, Ho Chi Minh City & Phan Thiet City, Vietnam
The full program of the 8th "Engaging with Vietnam - An Interdisciplinary Dialogue" Conference is... more The full program of the 8th "Engaging with Vietnam - An Interdisciplinary Dialogue" Conference is now available at http://engagingwithvietnam.net/conference-program
The 8th "Engaging with Vietnam -An Interdisciplinary Dialogue" Conference Engaging With Vietnam t... more The 8th "Engaging with Vietnam -An Interdisciplinary Dialogue" Conference Engaging With Vietnam through Scholarship and the Arts
6-7 October, 2016 University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu
This is a series of short James Bond-inspired videos created by Le Minh Khai with some help from Phan Le Ha to 'interrogate' Đào Duy Anh's scholarly writings which were published in Vietnam between the 1930s and the 1970s. Our video series is on-going, with more to come.
While some scholarship has found the roots of the modern Vietnamese idea of ‘nation’ in the dista... more While some scholarship has found the roots of the modern Vietnamese idea of ‘nation’ in the distant past, this paper attempts to illuminate ways of thought which were in conflict with Western nationalist ideas. These ways of thought had to be transformed in the early twentieth century in order for the idea of a Vietnamese nation to take hold.
After the advent of socialist politics in Vietnam, divinatory knowledge was repressed. In this co... more After the advent of socialist politics in Vietnam, divinatory knowledge was repressed. In this context, exile played a role in the divination that Dao-Tiem practiced as an art with remarkable continuity, in Hanoi and then in Paris from 1930 to 2002, contributing to the preservation and dissemination of an intangible heritage. My work during the French Institute's Villa Saigon artist-in-residency program in 2018 adopts an “artist-ethnographer” approach to perceive what is real and to question the status of divination in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). In parallel and with a necessary distance, I scrutinize the path and practice of diviner Dao-Tiem. My analysis aims to highlight the adjustments and persistence in both the French and Vietnamese spheres.
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Follow Zargon and Zarga as they make this point, and save the universe in the process. . .
This video is also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tkonKADtVo&t
facilitated the tasks of tax collection and military conscription in early
modern Vietnam. Through a comparative examination of this institution’s
history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Lê/Trịnh realm of
Đàng Ngoài in the north and the Nguyễn domain of Đàng Trong in the
south, this paper challenges ideas in extant English-language scholarship
that claim that Đàng Trong was less bureaucratic, less Confucian, and
more militarized than that of the Lê north. In the process, it offers some
new characterizations of early modern Vietnam.
For more, see https://contentasianstudies.wordpress.com/
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-5055-0_6
Keywords
Lạc Việt Zhuang Vietnamese Imagined ancestries Identity projects
Follow Zargon and Zarga as they make this point, and save the universe in the process. . .
This video is also available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tkonKADtVo&t
facilitated the tasks of tax collection and military conscription in early
modern Vietnam. Through a comparative examination of this institution’s
history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Lê/Trịnh realm of
Đàng Ngoài in the north and the Nguyễn domain of Đàng Trong in the
south, this paper challenges ideas in extant English-language scholarship
that claim that Đàng Trong was less bureaucratic, less Confucian, and
more militarized than that of the Lê north. In the process, it offers some
new characterizations of early modern Vietnam.
For more, see https://contentasianstudies.wordpress.com/
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-16-5055-0_6
Keywords
Lạc Việt Zhuang Vietnamese Imagined ancestries Identity projects
I previously asked (through a mutual acquaintance) for permission from Tạ Chí Đại Trường to make these comments available. I was told that he approved, but I never got around to doing so. Sadly, I recently learned of his passing, and therefore in his honor, and out of sincere gratitude for his comments, I am making them available here now.
In fact, there have been clear biases in area studies scholarship pertaining to Southeast Asian history and that is the topic that this video addresses.
In this video we look at one text that can do this. . . and we also talk about zombies and what can cause the universe to explode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1zlIfpcSgk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=732&v=CS2rYAPGKiI
For more on her talk, please see the following:
http://ias.ubd.edu.bn/seminar-on-the-...
In this video we argue that area studies/Asian Studies has lost its coolness, and we suggest one way to bring that coolness back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvGRAOJ-prU&t=421s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gsCJ0NbW3M&t=21s
This is its Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/contentasianstudies/
This is the first video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tashhgZ054
See https://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2016/04/15/who-were-the-ancient-yueviet/ for more elaborations.
These different forms of knowledge exist in tension with each other, and this talk looks at ways to bridge the divides between these different ways of knowing Southeast Asia.
This is a talk that I gave for an event that I could not attend. I have edited out the parts at the beginning and the end that refer to the event, and am sharing the rest for anyone interested in this topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Az8toh7hk
Short film 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTBaqAG54hM&feature=youtu.be
I will first introduce to you our series of videos made about a young scholar in Vietnam - Tran Quang Duc (Trần Quang Đức) - whose multilingual capabilities are admirable, and whose academic ideas, pedagogy as well as research approaches to scholarship are innovative and cutting-edged.
Le Minh Khai's more detailed introduction to this video series is available at: https://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/2015/01/11/following-tran-quang-duc/.
Hope you can rock with us!!!!!!!!!
Engaging with Vietnam YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRRy5BDDCawzzYUyScWsIeA
Our first short video responses to several questions regarding the theme of the conference and the role of 'the arts' in an academic conference.
Proboscis Production is Liam Kelley and Phan Le Ha
15-21 December 2018, Ho Chi Minh City & Phan Thiet City, Vietnam
www.engagingwithvietnam.org
6-7 October, 2016
University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu
Engaging with Vietnam Homepages:
www.engagingwithvietnam.org ; www.engagingwithvietnam.net
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRRy5BDDCawzzYUyScWsIeA
https://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/
This is a series of short James Bond-inspired videos created by Le Minh Khai with some help from Phan Le Ha to 'interrogate' Đào Duy Anh's scholarly writings which were published in Vietnam between the 1930s and the 1970s. Our video series is on-going, with more to come.