The Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle (USA), announces the conference-workshop
BEYOND TELEOLOGIES: ALTERNATIVE VOICES & HISTORIES IN COLONIAL VIET NAM
Conference dates: March 1-2, 2007
University of Washington - Seattle
Suzzallo/Allen
Library, Petersen Room
Keynote address by Patricia Pelley, award-winning author of “Postcolonial Vietnam: new histories of the national past” (2002)
This is the first conference-workshop of a multi-year research initiative in Viet Nam Studies, "Alternative Voices and Histories in Viet Nam: Colonial Modernities and Post-colonial Narratives."
Aimed at highlighting new interpretations of Vietnamese history and historiography, the Beyond Teleologies conference-workshop addresses the broad themes of alternative voices and counter-histories for the period of French colonial rule, as well as the first phase of the Franco-Viet Minh war. Moving beyond the ideological demands of colonialism, traditionalism, and nationalism (including revolutionary nationalism), it seeks to re-evaluate various political, social and cultural movements and phenomena of the colonial era within their particular contexts and meanings. Using such topics as physical bodies, food, fashion, travel, advertising, performance arts and literature, as well as religious activities, social identities and political organizations, the papers at the Beyond Teleologies conference-workshop challenge existing historiographies, engage social and intellectual histories that illuminate mentalités and investigate the symbolic order and semantics of colonial power.
Organizers are Christoph Giebel, Assoc. Prof. of International Studies and History, giebel@u.washington.edu, and Judith Henchy, Head, Southeast Asia Section, Univ. of Washington Libraries, and Lecturer in International Studies, judithh@u.washington.edu.
Support from the following University of Washington sponsors is gratefully acknowledged: the Southeast Asia Center, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, the Department of History, the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, and the University of Washington Libraries.
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Univ. of Washington Suzzallo/Allen
Library, Petersen Room
1:00 Opening remarks, Christoph Giebel and Judith Henchy, UW-Seattle
1:30 - 5:15 PANEL 1: COUNTER-NARRATIVES
Bradley Davis, Univ. of Washington-Seattle
"Subversive Technology: Chinese Bandits,
Telegraphs, and the Plot to Overthrow the Qing Empire from French Tonkin,
1891-1924"
Comments by Paul Sager, NYU
David Del Testa, Bucknell University
"Forgotten Stories of Deviance: Vietnam’s
Colonial-era Railroad Workers and the Construction of a Revolutionary Heritage"
Comments by Bradley Davis, UW-Seattle
Paul Sager, New York University
"'Proletarian' Solidarity inside the Colonial
State: Franco-Vietnamese Civil Service Unionism, 1935-1940 and 1947-1950"
Comments by David Del Testa, Bucknell
Gerard Sasges, Univ. of California-Berkeley / Univ. of California Education
Abroad Program Viet Nam Study Center
"'Indigenous representation is hostile to
all monopolies': Pham Quynh and the end of the alcohol monopoly in colonial
Viet Nam"
Comments by Sarah Whitney Womack, UV
Sarah Whitney Womack, Univ. of Virginia
"Beyond Resistance, Before the
Revolution: Towards a History of Failure for the Many Vietnams"
Comments by Gerard Sasges, UC-Berkeley
Janet Hoskins, Univ. of Southern California
"A Religious Vision of the Nation and Its
Pantheon: Caodaist Perspectives on Decolonizing French Indochina"
Comments by Pascal Bourdeaux, Paris Sorbonne
Pascal Bourdeaux, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris Sorbonne
"Interpretative essay on the 'Hoa Hao
Revolution'"
Comments by Janet Hoskins, USC
5:45 - 6:45 Dinner-time reception -- Smith Room, Suzzallo Library
7:00 KEYNOTE ADDRESS -- Kane Hall 210
Introductory remarks, Christoph Giebel and Judith Henchy, UW-Seattle
Keynote address, Patricia Pelley, Texas Tech University
"Twentieth-Century Centricities: Reflections on the Field of Vietnamese
Studies"
Friday, March 2, 2007
Univ. of Washington Suzzallo/Allen
Library, Petersen Room
8:45 - 12:30 PANEL 2: COLONIAL MODERNITIES AND REPRESENTATIONS
Philippe Peycam, Center for Khmer Studies
"From the Social to the Political: 1920s
Colonial Saigon as a Space of Possibilities in Vietnamese Consciousness"
Comments by Pham Hong Tung, VNU, Ha Noi
George Dutton, UCLA
"Advertising Modernity in the Vietnamese
Colonial Newspaper"
Comments by Nguyen Thi Phuong Chi, Journal "Nghien Cuu Lich Su"
Judith Henchy, Univ. of Washington-Seattle
"Contesting Historicisms: Teleology, Aesthetics
and Dialectical Thinking in 1930s Viet Nam"
Comments by Philippe Peycam, Center for Khmer Studies, Inc.
Caroline Herbelin, Centre de Recherche sur l’Extrême-Orient, Paris IV Sorbonne
"Architects of the fine Art school of
Indochina: the question of modernity in Vietnamese architecture"
Comments by Hazel Hahn, Seattle University
Hazel Hahn, Seattle University
"Ambiguous Modernism: Politics of the Municipal
Council and the Urban Planning of Hanoi, 1935-43"
Comments by Caroline Herbelin, Paris IV Sorbonne
Pham Hong Tung, Viet Nam National University, Ha Noi
"Presentation and Interpretation of Colonial
History in Vietnamese and French History Textbooks"
Comments by Judith Henchy, UW-Seattle
Nguyen Thi Phuong Chi, Journal
"Nghien Cuu Lich Su" "Main Research
Orientation of Vietnamese Historians Presented in the Journal 'Nghien Cuu
Lich Su'"
Comments by George Dutton, UCLA
1:45 - 5:30 PANEL 3: BODIES AND THEIR SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
Liam C. Kelley, Univ. of Hawai’i-Manoa
"Divine Lord Wenchang Meets Great King Tran: Spirit
Writing in Late-Imperial/Colonial Vietnam"
Comments by Micheline Lessard, Univ. of Ottawa
Trung Nguyen, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
"Marginalizing Practices: Bureaucracy, Ethnography,
and Becoming Chinese in Colonial Vietnam"
Comments by Liam C. Kelley, UH-Manoa
Micheline Lessard, Univ. of Ottawa
"'This Ignoble Traffic': The Trade in
Vietnamese Women and Children During the Period of French Colonial Rule,
1885-1945"
Comments by Trung Nguyen, UW-Madison
Michele Thompson, Southern Connecticut State University
"The Implications of Gia Truyen: Social
Class within the Healing Community in Vietnam"
Comments by Peter Zinoman, UC-Berkeley
Peter Zinoman, Univ. of California-Berkeley
"From Political Metaphor to Social Problem:
Deviant Sexuality in the Writing of Vu Trong Phung"
Comments by Michele Thompson, Southern Connecticut State University
Erica J. Peters, Independent Scholar, Mountain View, CA
"Culinary Controversies in Colonial Cochinchina"
Comments by Shawn McHale, GWU
Shawn McHale, George Washington University
“Cannibalism and Race Transformation in a
Mekong Delta at War, 1945-54”
Comments by Erica J. Peters, Independent Scholar
5:45 DOCUMENTARY SCREENING -- Odegaard
Undergraduate Library, Room 220
Janet Hoskins, Univ. of Southern California
Documentary film on Caodaism (ca. 50 minutes)
"The Left Eye of God: Voyages to Vietnam and California"
No registration is required. There is no attendance fee. All events on March
1 and 2 are open to the public.