Ecologies of Refuge: Stories of Vietnamese Diaspora in Louisiana: Lecture by Marguerite Nguyen
Event Date
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LBC 203 Stibbs
Please join Asian Studies at the LBC on Thursday, January 23, 2025 at 6:00 PM for this public lecture, which will explore the intersection of Asian American Studies, Critical Refugee Studies, literary studies, and environmental humanities: How do refugees make new homes in new settings and, in turn, transform their environments? How does our view of American literature change if we understand it through the lens of forced migration? Our guest lecturer Marguerite Nguyen will discuss Vietnamese diasporic histories of place, migration, and storytelling in Louisiana to explore these questions.
The lecture will be followed by a light dinner.
Marguerite Nguyen is an Associate Professor of English and East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University. She is author of America's Vietnam: The Longue Durée of U.S. Literature and Empire (Temple University Press, 2018) and co-editor of Refugee Cultures: Forty Years after the Vietnam War (MELUS, 2016). Prior to Wesleyan, she spent time researching dynamics of race, migration, environment, and narrative form in Southeast Asian American cultures of Louisiana. Her current project, "Refugee Ecologies," is based on this work and interprets American literature as a fraught practice of worldbuilding in contexts of disaster and displacement, particularly as depicted by writers of color. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, and National Humanities Center.
