The Contemporary Vietnamese Literature Study Group.

Dan Duffy

Department of Anthropology
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC, 27599 USA
919-932-2624
dduffy@isis.unc.edu

All are invited to consider joining the Contemporary Vietnamese Literature Study Group, sponsored at Chapel Hill by the Asian Studies program and the University Center for International Studies.

Present-day literature from Viet Nam touches on topics central to any discussion of our century: colonialism, revolution, urbanization, women's liberation, the Cold War, diaspora, immigration, global capital and post-socialist reform.

Vietnamese writers have played an active role in these movements as well as recording and reflecting upon them. They have created a modern literature that is especially suited to research and teaching on both the social and the personal aspects of life in exciting times.

The purpose of the study group is to bring this literature to greater academic attention, by carefully reading select works with the guidance of two experts. We'll meet one more time this semester, and twice in the spring.

For more information, read the full announcement below.

Contemporary Vietnamese Literature Study Group

The Curriculum in Asian Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Department of English, University of North Carolina at Wilmington announce the formation of a study group on contemporary Vietnamese literature for teachers, students, and faculty.

Structure

Four, two-hour seminar discussions over the 1998-1999 academic year will look at about ten short works of Vietnamese fiction and poetry written since 1986. The location of the seminars, held on Tuesday nights 7-9 p.m., will alternate between UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC-Wilmington.

Two of the meetings will focus on literature from Viet Nam, and two on literature from the overseas Vietnamese. All readings will be in English, most of them in translation. Secondary school teachers as well as college and university faculty and graduate students are invited, from departments of literature, Asian Studies, American Studies, history and the social sciences. Undergraduates and interested members of the public are welcome.

Dan Duffy and Dana Sachs will guide discussion of texts they have worked with closely, as editor and as translator. We take this literature seriously, as art, and for its insights into contemporary life both in Viet Nam and elsewhere. We hope that participants will bring to the discussion their own interests in Asian and Asian-American literature, nationalism, globalism, and the role and responsibility of the writer in society. Participants must prepare for careful discussion of the fiction and poetry.

Seminar leaders

Dan Duffy is a graduate student in anthropology at the UNC-Chapel Hill. His dissertation is on the social life of the text, researching what people do with books, in order to discern both individual agency and social structure. He has taught Vietnamese literature at Yale, where he edited research collections on Vietnamese studies. His criticism has appeared in The Nation, The Far Eastern Economic Review, Education About Asia, Tuoi Tre Chu Nhat, and Nguoi Ha Noi.

Dana Sachs is an instructor in the English Department at UNC-Wilmington and a graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts program there. As a journalist, she has written extensively about Viet Nam and Vietnamese literature in such publications as The San Francisco Examiner, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Far Eastern Economic Review. She translated, with Bac Hoai Tran, Vietnamese author Le Minh Khue's 1997 collection of short stories The Stars, The Earth, The River (Curbstone Press). Her other translations of Vietnamese literature have appeared in numerous anthologies.

 

Seminar Schedule for 1999

January 26, 1999, 7-9 PM

UNC-Chapel Hill at the University Center for International Studies.

Ghost Stories: Persons Without Bodies

Leader: Dan Duffy

Participants are expected to read seven present-day ghost stories from Vietnamese authors here in the United Sates and in Viet Nam, and a passage of an old Vietnamese poem, available in a packet from Asian Studies.

UNC Anthropology graduate student Dan Duffy will lead a discussion of the work, focusing on what the different ghosts mean. Why are the authors conjuring up persons without bodies? Is it a matter of war dead, of family grief, or personal dislocation? Are there clear distinctions in this regard to be drawn between immigrant American authors and those in Viet Nam? Between the older and younger generations? Taken altogether, in reference to the old poem, can we see a common attitude among Vietnamese towards the dead?

What kind of people are the ghosts in Vietnamese stories? We will start with the ever-popular novel in verse, The Tale of Kieu. The 19th century poet, Nguyen Du, opens his story of the hard life of a beautiful woman with a ghost story, when Lady Kieu summons up a spirit at the grave of another beauty. Then well move on to present day, with stories from two generations of writers living in Ha Noi, about ghosts from the war against the American invaders. Phan Thanh Hoai, an elderly revolutionary, now a bike repairman, writes of a friends memories of his son. Woman combat veteran Le Minh Khue, a famous novelist, evokes the spirit of an African American GI. Then well look at work from the younger generation of Vietnamese. Ho Anh Thai, a young diplomat, sets his ghost story in India and England. Minh D. Nguyen and Andrew Lam, Vietnamese-American writers in their twenties, speak of the ghosts within those families who made the great migration to the United States.

Discussion leader Dan Duffy will begin with the passage from The Tale of Kieu and work with the seminar to draw out persistent themes and questions from all the ghost stories. What is the attitude expressed towards the past? What is the sense of fate, of the future, expressed?

How do these Vietnamese writers situate themselves between what has happened and what could happen?

The stories:

The Iron Spike by Phan Thanh Hoai

Tony D by Le Minh Khue

The Indian by Ho Anh Thai

Dark Wood and Shadows and Grandmas Tales by Andrew Lam

The Monster in the Toilet Bowl and Tale of Apricot by Minh D. Nguyen and a passage from Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du

 

March 23, 1999, 7-9 PM, UNC-Wilmington

"Views of the City: Contemporary Social Satire"

Leader: Dana Sachs

Texts: "Tony D" by Le Minh Khue, "The Saigon Tailor Shop" by Pham Thi Hoai, and "Without a King" by Nguyen Huy Thiep

Texts

One book, Two Shores/Deux Rives, should be purchased by participants.

The other readings will be on reserve at UNC-Chapel Hill and UNC-Wilmington libraries, and also available for purchase as a course-pack at a local copy shop near each campus: Copytron, 100 West Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, 933-2679; Kwik-Kopy Printing, 336 S. College Road, Wilmington, 392-2676.

Seminar Locations

UNC-Chapel Hill: University Center for International Studies, 223 E. Franklin St., first floor lounge (parking behind building or across street at Morehead Planetarium)

UNC-Wilmington: Morton Hall, 601 S. College Road, first floor (parking on either side of building)

Registration

To join the Contemporary Vietnamese Literature Study Group, please fill out the following form and return by e-mail to <vietlit@unc.edu>, or send a printed form to Contemporary Vietnamese Literature, Curriculum in Asian Studies, Abernethy Hall, CB# 3267, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599.

 

Name__________________________________________________________________

Address________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________

E-mail_______________________________ Fax______________________________

Office phone________________________ Home phone_________________________

 

____ I will attend the seminar on January 26 at UNC-Chapel Hill

____ I cannot attend, but keep me informed of future meetings

 

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