2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the official end of the Second Indochina War and the solidification of Communist regimes in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. 1975 also ushered in waves of Southeast Asian refugee and other migrant movements, establishing new communities around the world, including in Australia, Canada, France, and the US.
In January, ASERN came together in an MLA roundtable to revisit 1975 as a nodal point and to reflect on the legacies of war and trauma in communities both national and diasporic. With a general focus on cultural production in French, we looked at some of the trajectories of imperialism and migration that link France, Southeast Asia, and the United States, evoking different intersecting histories of 1975 and beyond, and the disciplines and representational strategies that have arisen to grapple with the legacies of these histories. Immediately after the panel, we took a field trip to Dong Phuong bakery in New Orleans East to sample the Vietnamese version of the New Orleans king cake, which is itself an American take on the French galette des rois.
Asie du Sud Est Research Network 