Catherine H. Nguyen a lecturer on History & Literature at Harvard University. Her research is in and at the intersections of Asian American, transpacific, postcolonial, and critical refugee studies. She is currently working on her book manuscript Children Born of War, Adoptees Made by War: Vietnamese Diasporic Contestations of Empire and Race that traces the long history of Western humanitarian intervention in Vietnam by an examination of legislation that addresses Vietnamese mixed-race children and citizenship and of literary representation of mixed-race children as transnational and transracial adoptees. Her comparative and interdisciplinary research critiques how the Vietnamese mixed-race child turned transnational adoptee is the object upon which the rhetoric of humanitarian aid and the discourse of hospitality attempt to recuperate the loss of empire and military loss by way of family building as nation building. More broadly, Catherine's research focuses on Vietnamese diasporic literature and Asian American and Asian diasporic literature, including graphic novels and film, and her work includes literature written in English and French.
EDUCATION
- PhD, Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles
- Masters de Recherche, Littérature comparée, Université de Provence, Aix-Marseille I
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Vietnamese diasporic literatures
- Critiques of the Vietnam War and of U.S. Empire and Militarism
- Operation Babylift and Critical Adoption studies
- Critical Refugee studies
- French Imperialism, Francophone literature, and Indochine
- Graphic novels and Immigration
Catherine has taught undergraduate courses on immigration and refugees from the Enlightenment to the 21st century, representations of medicine and race in fiction, and global graphic novels, among other classes. As Lecturer on History & Literature, Catherine teaches seminars on Asian American literature and graphic novels and on empire and postcolonial literatures as well as directs year-long junior and senior tutorials for students in the History & Literature fields of Ethnic Studies, American Studies, European Studies, and Modern World.
TEACHING INTERESTS
- Asian American literature and Ethnic studies
- Immigration, Migration, Displacement, and Refugees
- Empire and Postcolonialism
- Family, Adoption, and Kinship
- Graphic novels and Visual representation
- Medical Humanities
COURSES TAUGHT AT HARVARD
- FRSEMR 64E Asian American Literature
- HIST-LIT 90DK Asian American Graphic Novels
- HIST-LIT 97 Education and Empire
- HIST-LIT 98 Junior Tutorial
- HIST-LIT 99 Senior Tutorial and Senior Honors Thesis
COURSES TAUGHT AT UCLA
- GE CLST M71CW Biotechnology and Society Seminar
- CL 4CW Enlightment to 20th Century
- CL 4DW Great Book of the World at Large
