Cindy A. Nguyen
Southeast Asian Area Studies Specialist
Digital Humanist & Historian
cindyanguyen@brown.edu
ACADEMIC APPOINTMENT AND BOOK MANUSCRIPTS
2019- Brown University
Postdoctoral Fellow in History Department and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities
Current Reading and Misreading: Social Life of Libraries and Colonial Control in Vietnam, 1865-1958
Print culture, history of the book, libraries, media studies, literacy, literature, race and gender
EDUCATION
2013-2019 University of California, Berkeley
Primary Field in Southeast Asia
- Comprehensive area studies training in history, politics, and culture of Southeast Asia (pre-modern to modern) with a focus on modern Vietnam
- Directed by Professor Peter Zinoman (Vietnam) and Associate Professor Penelope Edwards (Cambodia)
Second Field in Knowledge Systems: Classification & Colonial Knowledge
- Comparative and thematic field on history of knowledge, information, and classification
- Directed by Associate Professor Janaki Bakhle (South Asia) and Professor Cathryn Carson (Historian of Science and Technology)
Outside Field in Digital Humanities & Data Science
- Interdisciplinary methodology and project development using text analysis, library and information sciences, computational analysis, machine learning, and natural language processing
- Directed by Assistant Professor David Bamman (School of Information)
2011-2013 Michigan State University
Master of Arts in History – Southeast Asia, Advised by Associate Professor Charles Keith
2006-2010 University of California, Los Angeles
Bachelor of Arts in History and Southeast Asian Studies; Minors: Global Studies, Political Science
AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
2020 Pattana Kitiarsa Southeast Asian Council Prize, Association for Asian Studies, “The Social Life of the Hanoi Central Library: Reading Cultures & Public Space, 1919-1941”
2020 Center for Khmer Studies Senior Fellowship, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
2020 Brown Arts Initiative Research & Development Grant for Documentary Film on Refugee Exodus
2019 LA Review of Books, Publishing Workshop and Incubator+
2019 NEH Institute at the East-West Center, Honolulu, “Colonial Experiences and their Legacies in Southeast Asia”
2019 Vietnam Studies Group – Association for Asian Studies Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper
2018 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Writing Fellowship
2017 Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship– Vietnam & France
2016-2017 Fulbright Institute of International Education US Student Fellowship– Vietnam
2016 École française d’Extrême-Orient Field Scholarship in the Hanoi Centre
2016 D. Kim History of Science in East Asia Fellowship
2014-2015 Digital Humanities at Berkeley Collaborative Research Award
2014, 2016 Institute for East Asian Studies Digital History Research Fellowship
2014 Foreign Language Area Studies: Vietnamese, Vietnamese Language Studies, Saigon
2013-2019 University of California, Berkeley University Regents-Intern Fellowship
2012 FUTH Graduate Summer School and Scholarship at Hanyang University, Seoul Korea
PUBLICATIONS
2020 Book Chapter in Edited Volume: (In revision) “Creating the National Library in Saigon: Colonial Legacies, Fragmented Collections, and Reading Publics, 1946-1958,” in Rethinking Republican Vietnam: Ideological and Political Foundations of the First Republic, 1920-1963, Volume 1 edited by Nu-Anh Tran and Tuong Vu
2020 Solo-Authored Research Article in Peer Reviewed Journal: “Reading Rules: The Symbolic and Social Spaces of Reading in the Hanoi Central Library, 1919-1941,” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Summer 2020, Volume 15
2017 Art Publication: “Train/Xe lửa” Bi-lingual poetry on History, Memory, and Language in independent Vietnamese and global publisher AJAR PRESS, issue 5, song song || para||el, Fall
2016 Translation (Vietnamese to English): “The Library of the French School of the Far East” by Ngô Thế Long, Thưviện Học viện Viễn Đông Bác cổ, Tạp chí Thông tin Khoa học xã hội, No.7, 2016. Translated by Cindy A. Nguyen.
2014 Book Review: “The Cost of Progress,” of Luc Xi: Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Hanoi by Shaun Kingsley Malarney, International Institute of Asian Studies, 22 October 2014, New Asia Books
2013 Book Chapter in Edited Volume: “A Xu/Sou for the Students: A Discourse Analysis of Vietnamese Student Migration to France in the Late Colonial Period” in The Question of Return: Leaving, Arriving, and Returning in an Age of Transnational Migration, ed. Michiel Baas, Amsterdam University Press, 2013
2011 Journal Article: “Beyond Betrayal: ‘Collaboration’ in Early 20th Century Vietnam,” Columbia East Asia Review, Volume 4, Spring 2011.
INVITED TALKS
2020 “Translating Across Time and Space,” Lecture, Artist Talk, and Film Screening, Harvard University, Committee on Ethnicity, Rights, and Migration, Cambridge, MA, 21 February
2020 “Contested Histories of Colonial Indochina,” Lecture, Middlesex Community College, Asian Studies Development Program East-West Center, Bedford, MA, 11 February
2017 “Operationalizing Historical Questions: Datafying the Library of Congress Vietnam Collections,” Conference Organizer and Presenter, Texts as Data- Data as Texts Seminar and Workshop at Yonsei University, Seoul, 12 January – Organized Seminar, Led Lecture & Discussion
2016 “Lịch sử Thư viện Việt Nam 1887-1986: Phương pháp tiếp cận nghiên cứu của đại học Hoa kỳ” (History of Libraries in Vietnam: American Research Methods), Lecture, Vietnam National University (Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội – Trường Đại học Khoa học Xã hội và Nhân văn), Hanoi, Vietnam, 23 December
2016 “Lịch sử Thư viện Việt Nam 1887-1986” (A Survey of Libraries in Vietnam in the 20th Century) Lecture, Institute of Social Sciences Information (Viện thông tin khoa học xã hội), Hanoi, Vietnam, 4 November
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2020 Panel Convener and Presenter: “The Politics of ‘Good Reading’: Publishing, Libraries, and Propaganda in Colonial Vietnam,” Panel Organizer “Social Life of Print in Colonial Vietnam: From Cultural Economics to Politics of Information,” Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, Boston, 19-22 March (Accepted)
2019 “Misbehaviors: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Labor in the Hanoi and Saigon Library, 1858-1945,” EuroSEAS International Conference, Berlin, 10-13 September
2019 “Reading Culture: The Material and Social History of Libraries in Colonial Vietnam,” Panel on “The Concept of Culture in Vietnam,” Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, Denver, 21-24 March
2018 “Technologies of Information: Libraries, Publishing, and Propaganda in Wartime Indochina (1908-1945),” Columbia University Wartime Asia Workshop, 5 October
2018 “Reading and Misreading: From Temple of European Knowledge to Public Space of Vietnamese Modernity and Social Life in the Central Library Hanoi, 1919-1941,” 13th Singapore Graduate Forum on Southeast Asia Studies, ARI, National University of Singapore, 23-27 July – Presentation
2015 “Invisible Authorship: New Perspectives on Translation and Colonial Texts,” Poster, Digital Humanities Faire, University of California, Berkeley, 8 April
2013 Digital Humanities “Sorting Things Out” Workshop at Umea University, HUMlab, Umea, Sweden 5-6 December
2013 “Finding Civilization: A Discursive Study of Vietnamese Student Migration to France,” Panel Cultures & Society in Migration, Michigan State University Migration without Boundaries Conference, East Lansing, 4-5 October
2013 “Movement and Gender: Representations of Tourism in Late Colonial Vietnam,” Panel Traffic: Travel, Translation, and Illicit Trade in Colonial Indochina, Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, San Diego, 21-24 March
2012 “Travel and Translation through Vietnamese Travel Stories Du Ký,” “Borders of Knowledge” International Graduate Student Summer School, Flying University of Transnational Humanities (FUTH)- Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea, 15-18 July
DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS
2019-Present Affiliated Faculty, “Virtual Angkor” – Digital teaching of virtual reality simulation of 13th century Angkor temple complex. Development of teaching module and remote class for Brown University
2019-Present Principal Investigator, “Vietnamese Social Library” – Database, Visualization of Vietnamese Historical Publishing and Library Data
2016-Present Co-Principal Investigator, “Deconstructing Libraries: Predicting Titles, Topics, and Publication City” – “A Dual Approach to Historical Research and Machine Learning” Library of Congress Data Science Project – Report
2014-Present Principal Investigator, “Invisible Authorship: Critical Anlaysis of Collaborative Colonial Text” – Critical Digital Humanities, Indigenous Knowledge, Visual Data- Presented at DH Faire Berkeley “On Examining a Peripheral Text: Henri Oger & Technique du Peuple Annamite”- Poster
2014 Co-Principal Investigator, “Vietnamese Intellectual Networks Database” , funded through Andrew W. Mellon – UC Berkeley Digital Humanities Fellowship
2013 Principal Investigator, “Visualizing Vietnamese Print Culture and Print Industry,” Digital History School, Umea University Sweden
2013 Visualization and Research Lead, “Detroit Digital” Cultural Heritage Informatics Field School, Michigan State University
UNIVERSITY WORK & ACADEMIC SERVICE
2019-Present Curriculum and Programming Mentor, Southeast Asia Student Initiative at Brown University
2019-Present Postdoctoral Fellow, Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University
2016-2017 Working Group, École française d’Extrême-Orient, Hanoi Centre
2013-2019 Co-Director and Member,Berkeley Digital Humanities Working Group
Directed Digital Humanities Working Group (2013-2016), Coordinated the cross campus and bay area Digital Humanities Faire at UC Berkeley (2015), NEH funded Digital Humanities Fellow at Berkeley (2014-2015), Participated in Bay area Digital Humanities workshops and events
2014-2015 Digital History Coordinator, UC Berkeley History Department and Social Science D-Lab
2014-2015 Graduate Student Instructor, UC Berkeley History Department
2014 Translator and Researcher, Biography of Susan Sontag by Benjamin Moser
2013-2014 Campus Digital Humanities Assistant, Research Information Technologies, UC Berkeley Developed campus-wide initiative for digital humanities research, teaching, and methodology
2012-2013 Research Assistant, Translator, and Area Specialistfor MSU Vietnam Group Archive
Collaborative digitization project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
Visualization Lead, “MSU Vietnam Group Archive Timeline”
2012-2013 Organizing Board for Interdisciplinary Conference on Migration Studies
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2020 Spring Print and Power in Modern Southeast Asia : Undergraduate/graduate seminar on print culture and government legibility in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam at Brown University
2019 Fall Contested Histories of Colonial Indochina: Undergraduate seminar on history, culture, and politics of French colonial Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos at Brown University
2018 History & Memory of Vietnamese Refugees: Guest Lecture at Pawcatuck Middle School, CT
2016 Fall Memory & History:Guest Lecture & Discussion
2015 Spring History of Mao: Graduate Student Instructor (upper division)
2014 Fall History of Vietnam: Graduate Student Instructor (upper division)
2014 Fall Instructional Technology:Pedagogy Talk & Discussion
2008-2011 Academic Peer Learning Supervisor & Facilitator,UCLA Division of Undergraduate EducationSupervised 100 undergraduate tutors for campus-wide Peer Learning Tutoring Services for ESL, Math & Sciences, and Athletics academic support
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT & ART
Artist-Historian: Cross-pollinates between art, technology, and language
2016-Present Artist, “Mẹ, Translated” multimedia film project on translation, memory, refugee communities; Awarded Brown Arts Initiative Grant
2019-Present Filmmaker, “The Undeniable Force of Khó Khăn” film, featured at Viet Film Festival (2019), Critical Refugee Archives (2020); published release in Diacritics.org, “This is for mẹ”, and AJAR Press
2018-Present Writer,If-Me.orgmental health non-profit and open source project. Essay “An Asian American’s Language of Mental Health”:
2016-2019 Independent Publisher, Arts Curator and Director, HAPTIC PRESS
2016-Present Artist and Project Director, “Mis-Reading” multimedia visual art, cross-genre and community project on feminism and empowerment
LANGUAGES & TECHNICAL SKILLS
- Python: Applied comprehension, project development experience
- Text Analysis & Topic Modeling: Mallet, Natural Language Toolkit, Voyant
- Visualization: Gephi, timeline.js, charts.js, highcharts.js
- Data & Databases: GitHub, MySQL, Relational Databases, Open Office, Open Refine
- Project Management, Digital Research Project Consulting, Startup & Organization Operations
- GIS:ArcGIS, QGIS
- Visual: Virtual Reality, 360 Video, Film Production, Photography
- Content Management Systems: Drupal, WordPress
- Design: Adobe InDesign, book layout, design publishing
- Vietnamese: Native fluency in reading, speaking, advanced writing
- French: Intermediate reading, speaking, writing
