Author Archives: sudestasie

New publication by Leslie Barnes: Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film

Sex Work in Southeast Asia (Edinburgh UP, 2025) examines the ambivalences that mark Southeast Asian sex industries under twenty-first-century global imperialism, exploring the multi-layered subjectivities of sex workers, procurers and clients, and interrogating the frameworks in which discourses surrounding sex work circulate.  Engaged with debates concerning the status of transactional sex, it explores the symbolic force and concrete conditions of sex work in Cambodia and Vietnam,Continue reading “New publication by Leslie Barnes: Sex Work in Southeast Asia: Scenes of Ambivalence in Literature and Film”

ASERN at the Society for French Historical Studies

Despite a century of French colonialism in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, this history remains strikingly absent from the French national imaginary. France’s humiliation at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 produced a collective amnesia that effectively buried the memory of colonial Indochina—and with it, the stories of the millions of people caught up in the projectContinue reading “ASERN at the Society for French Historical Studies”

Maika Nguyen, “Writing Home”

In April 2025, Maika Nguyen successfully defended her thesis at the University College Dublin, titled ‘Writing Home: Haiti and Vietnam in the Autofiction of Dany Laferrière and Anna Moï’. Closely comparing the autofictional texts of Vietnamese writer Anna Moï (Nostalgie de la rizière, L’Année du Cochon de Feu and Le Pays sans nom) alongside those (Pays sans chapeau and L’ Énigme duContinue reading “Maika Nguyen, “Writing Home””

Clément Baloup’s Visit and the Launch of Vietnamese Memories: Down Under

In October 2025, Clément Baloup, French-Vietnamese graphic novelist and visiting scholar at the School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne, spent two weeks in Australia teaching, running comic workshops, and leading seminars on graphic art, memory and diasporic narratives. His visit coincided with the release of Vietnamese Memories: Down Under, his fifth volume in the Mémoires de VietContinue reading “Clément Baloup’s Visit and the Launch of Vietnamese Memories: Down Under”

New publication by Alex Kurmann: “Writing Millennial Lives at The Intersection of Class, Queerness and Refugeeism: Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”

Alex Kurmann has just published a chapter Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019) in the Edinburgh Companion to the Millennial Novel. Vuong’s novel not only offers a personal literary exploration of what it is to be a gay Vietnamese refugee coming of age in working-class America, but also presents an intimate heterobiography of subjects negotiatingContinue reading “New publication by Alex Kurmann: “Writing Millennial Lives at The Intersection of Class, Queerness and Refugeeism: Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous””

New publication by Nguyễn Giáng Hương: ‘Litterature vietnamienne francophone’ out in Vietnamese

Nguyễ Giáng Hương’s Littérature vietnamienne francophone has been translated into Vietnamese by the Hố Chì Minh General Publishing House. The Việt Nam New Weekend announced the publication in a recent edition. In their spread on the publication, they quote literary scholar, Phạm Xuân Nguyên, who claims that “along with Jack Yeager’s The Vietnamese Novel inContinue reading “New publication by Nguyễn Giáng Hương: ‘Litterature vietnamienne francophone’ out in Vietnamese”

New publication by Leslie Barnes et. al: ‘I Love Her Like My Family’; Cinema, Conservation, Cambodia

The Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center opened its doors in Phnom Penh in December 2006, with the aim of collecting and making widely accessible the country’s audiovisual heritage. Since then, it has provided practical training and professional support to hundreds of aspiring archivists, filmmakers and audiovisual technicians. At the same time, it has become a hubContinue reading “New publication by Leslie Barnes et. al: ‘I Love Her Like My Family’; Cinema, Conservation, Cambodia”

Paris, qu’as-tu fait de nous?

Paris a accueilli et nourri Pham Van Ky depuis son départ du Vietnam pour ses études à l’étranger. Cette ville a été cruciale dans les réflexions de l’écrivain et est devenu le symbole de sa quête d’harmonie entre l’Orient et l’Occident. Dans le Fonds Pham Van Ky de la Bibliothèque nationale de France sont conservés les tapuscrits d’une vingtaine de romans inédits. Paris, qu’as-tu fait de nous ? estContinue reading “Paris, qu’as-tu fait de nous?”