Personal Statement:
In my research as in my teaching, I have been motivated by the desire to understand, on the one hand, the natural environment, and on the other hand, humanity, linked inextricably by their interactions. Born in Vietnam, during the war known as “the American War” or “the Vietnam War,” its histories, cultures, and environment are part of my identity as a historian. My early writing resulted from the combination of all the above factors My present research has focused on an analysis of the fabric of Vietnamese national identity manifested through multiple identifiers. On this long journey, I have begun work on a general history of Vietnam while examining Vietnam’s ancient past through the lenses of varied fields such as archaeology, anthropology, and epistemology, for a capstone monograph on the formation of Vietnamese national identity.

Representative Publications:
Culture and Customs of Vietnam (with Mark McLeod, Greenwood, 2001)

The Mekong River and the Struggle for Indochina: Water, War, and Peace (Praeger, 1999)

“European Reconquest and Neo-Colonialism in Southeast Asia,” in Loyd Lee, ed., World War II in Asia and the Pacific and the Post-War World, vol. 2, 1998

“State versus Indigenous Peoples: The Impact of Hydraulic Projects on Indigenous Peoples of Asia,” Journal of World History 7:1 (March 1996) 

Notes: