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Libraries and reading in colonial Vietnam

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Cindy Anh Nguyen is Assistant Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles with appointments in Information Studies, Digital Humanities Program, and Asian Languages & Culture. Her first book, Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2026) uncovers how libraries functioned as both instruments of colonial dominance and an experimental space of public critique. Her transdisciplinary research examines the historical and socio-technical production of knowledge in Southeast Asia through libraries, encyclopedia, visual media, and language through feminist, decolonial, and critical approaches. Her work has appeared in Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asia, Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, the Vietnamese American Refugee Experience Model Curriculum, and numerous edited volumes on history and digital humanities. She is the founder of Culture Futures Rest Lab which explores cultural and computational questions of interpretation and context by centering global south codesign and multivocal knowledge making. She is also a public scholar and community artist.

Recent Talks

Bibliotactics Published: Available Open Access Globally, Book Talks, Podcasts

After a long journey, Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam is now available! Free Open Access or Print copy through UC Press (code UCPSAVE30 for 30% off). Follow specific book related events, see video recordings and teaching resources here: https://bibliotactics.com Below are a flurry of recap of the past month: Spring in person and…

Saigon Experimental “Book Talks”: Art, Community, Women’s Reading, August 8-9, 2025

Join us in Saigon for experimental community talks around reading, feminism, and art. It’s an honor and dream to “start” my book tour in Saigon (where the intellectual/personal/political journey began) alongside feminist cothinkers Minh and Yen. August 8, 2025: “Library History as Data-Art-Life: Fabulating the Vietnamese Past” August 9, 2025: “Women’s Reading: Theory and Practice”…

On Slowness: A World Building Provocation for Teaching and Research

In the past, I was frustrated by how slow my work moved. I was impatient that my critical inquiry, confusion, curiosity forced me to constantly revisit sources, translations, historical contexts. Market pressures to publish and produce (a talk, an article, a dissertation, a book, teaching, digital resources) with the promise of professional security perpetuated a…

Teaching Resources

Feminist Decolonial Futures: Tactics of Teaching Digital Humanities [New Publication]

Link to Publication on Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy: https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/read/feminist-decolonial-futures-tactics-teaching-digital-humanities/section/7ec4034b-77d8-4722-9ab1-e63b8e6e0aef Excerpt: “This piece is part of a commitment to sharing and creating human communities of care alongside the materialist structures of support that constrain the everyday, such as time and resources. Interwoven with feminist and decolonial praxis, this piece includes a collection of critical…

[TEACHING] On Digital Teaching During and After COVID-19

On November 9, 2020 I was invited to speak on the topic of digital teaching as part of the History Department, Center for Digital Scholarship, and 21st Century PhD Series at Brown University. The talk was well attended on Zoom from faculty, staff, and students from all over campus. I talk through concrete activities, tools,…

Translating Across Time and Space: Film Screening, Artist Talk, and Creative Translation Activity at Harvard

I was invited to speak at an innovative event on translation and creative expression organized by the scholar Catherine H. Nguyen from the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature and the Committee on Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights at Harvard University. Together with poet-scholar Quan Tran, we shared our scholarship and arts practice. I spoke…