As part of this project, Temple and the Ho Chi Minh Academy are cooperating on an on-line handbook of philosophical terms from East and West, with entries in both Vietnamese and English. This project is being supported by the Ford Foundation. English-Vietnamese Handbook on Philosophy and Political Economy

  ▶ The Center welcomes new Staff and new Fellows!
 

Planning for Academic Exchanges

By Prof. Kimberly Goyette & Prof. Sophia Quinn-Judge
The Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture, and Society

Meeting professors and students from the Sociology Department, Tôn Đức Thắng University, for a question and answer session.

Structural Violence and State Building in East Asia

By Dr. Tuong Vu, Princeton University/University of Oregon

Sponsors: Department of Political Science, Institute for Public Affairs,
and The Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture, and Society

Date/Location: Monday, February 20, 12:00–2:30 p.m.
Women's Studies Lounge, Room 821 Anderson Hall
(A light lunch will be served at 12:00 pm, Talk begins at 12:45 pm.)

Abstract: Modern states in East Asia were formed out of traditional and colonial empires about 200 years after their European counterparts and 100 years after Latin American states. While modern East Asian states are much younger, cohesive and effective states are the norm in East Asia just as fragile and ineffective states are in Latin America. What explains East Asia's more advanced level of state development despite its later entrance into modernity? Based on four cases (China, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam), this paper argues that war, capital and elite support for financing state building are not central to the postcolonial growth of cohesive states in East Asia. Rather, structural violence, which is violence motivated by ideologies and executed systematically with the goal of establishing long-term ideological and political hegemony, was the primary cause of cohesive states in the East Asian context. Bio: Tuong Vu is Visiting Research Fellow, Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University, and Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oregon. His book, Paths to Development in Asia: South Korea, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia (Cambridge, 2010) was selected by Asia Society as a 2011 Bernard Schwartz Award Honorable Mention. See Dr. Tuong Vu full page.

Documentary film (click on title below to see the preview)

Between Rivers:
Images of Vietnamese Philadelphians

By Paul Brian Osorio and Jayasinhji Jhala, Ph.D.

The research and film work was made possible
with support from the Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture, and Society.

Contributions from Sophie Quinn-Judge, Ph.D., Kimberly Ann Goyette, Ph.D., Ngô Thanh Nhàn.

This film reveals contemporary Vietnamese culture in the city of Philadelphia through fleeting glances and artistic expressions. Unlike many conventional documentary films, it does not provide a overriding narrative or linear story, instead, it offers viewers a unique and informative window to Vietnamese food, art, culture, and community in a cinematic style employing both Cinéma vérité and Direct Cinema or "passive" camerawork. First engaging in extensive research and ethnography, the filmmakers then set out to document the prevalent features of Vietnamese culture that have been brought to this western city and show how they are thriving not only among Vietnamese immigrants, but also with native Philadelphians. Offering portraits of people engaging in a friendly and candid manner, the film shows that some of the most ordinary interactions can be culturally informative, inspirational, and enlightening.

This film proves very useful for those teaching and/or interested in the Vietnamese diaspora, cross cultural exchange, experimental documentary filmmaking, and Philadelphian society. It also opens up avenues for discussion of Eastern and Western cultural intersections, cultural preservation, and diaspora community development.

  October 12 2011
  12:00 Noon
  Council for Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University, Brown Bag Seminar

  "Le Duan and the Political Struggle for Peace in Vietnam"
  Sophie Quinn Judge
  Abstract >>

"The story of diplomatic efforts to avert conflict in Vietnam often ignores the complex politics of Vietnam, south and north. This talk will focus on Vietnamese attempts to neutralize the South, starting with the post-Geneva era, extending to the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] diplomacy of 1962 and finally, the interegnum of General Dương Văn Minh in 1963. Although Lê Duẩn is known as the major promoter of military struggle after 1954, new information from a Vietnamese study of the Resistance in the Western Mekong Delta shows Lê Duẩn as a skilfull political organizer in the months after the Geneva Accords divided Vietnam. He hoped to maintain communist influence in the south by ordering the infiltration of southern revolutionaries into the local government militias and armed forces of the religious sects after 1954. The Cao Đàis who took refuge in Phnom Penh in 1955, after Diệm's attack on their Tây Ninh base, joined a campaign organized by expatriate Vietnamese to call for a neutral South Vietnam. Their relations with the southern communists is one question this talk will explore. The NLF [National Liberation Front of South Vietnam] program of 1960 and a DRV diplomatic proposal, designed by Lê Duẩn in 1962, continued to advocate a neutral South Vietnam. The final point of this talk will examine the popularity of the neutral idea within South Vietnam and efforts by Gen. Minh to move from military to political competition."
 

Reception for the Hanoi National University of Education
10 May 2011, 9:30 AM - 3:30 PM
Gladfelter Hall, 10th Floor, CHAT Lounge

The Delegation from the Hanoi National University of Education
(Đại học Sư phạm Hà Nội):

1. Mme, Dr. Nguyen Thi Tinh, Vice President, Hanoi National University of Education (HNUE)
2. Asst. Prof., Dr. Le Dinh Trung, Head of Science & Technology Research, HNUE
3. Mr. Vu Dinh Luu, Vice Director, HNUE Press (Publishing House)
4. Mme. Do Thi Phan Thu, Staff, Office for Science & Technology Research
5. Mr. Dao Anh Phuong, Staff, Office for Science & Technology Research
6. Asst. Prof., Dr. Bui Van Nghi, Dean, School of Mathematics & Informatics
7. Asst. Prof., Dr. Phung Ngoc Kiem, Head of Graduate Training Office
8. Mme. Van Thi Xuan Thu, Head of Finance and Planning Office
9. Mme. Le Thanh Chinh, Staff, Finance and Planning Office
10. Mme. Nguyen Thi Loan, Director, State Treasure of Tu Liem, Hanoi

Highlighting Research from the Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture, and Society
This panel will highlight three research projects. The first (Goyette) concerns research on the growing
private sector in Vietnamese higher education and its effects on who has access to post-secondary
education. The second (Quinn-Judge) explores the ideas and careers of Vietnamese leaders who
advocated a peaceful, negotiated solution to a colonial war that grew into a civil war and one of the
bitterest conflicts of the Cold War. The third (Ngô Thanh Nhàn) describes a project which digitizes
and preserves the very important endangered documents in the Vietnamese ideographic Nom script.

2010 Global Temple Conference
November 16, 2010 — Howard Grittis Student Center South

Session 4: 09:40 AM - 10:50 AM
Room: 217D (2nd Floor)

Featuring:
— Prof. Kimberly A. Goyette (Department of Sociology),
"Stratification and the Growth of the Private Sector
in Higher Education in Vietnam"
— Prof. Sophia Quinn-Judge (Center's Vice Director)
"Looking for the Elusive Third Way"
— Dr. Ngô Thanh Nhàn,
"A British Library Endangered Archives Project: Digital
Preservation of an Ancient Hán Nôm archive in Vietnam"
(click here to view the full slide presentation, Acrobat pdf 24MB)

Following Global Temple Conference updates link here.

Center for the Study of Force & Diplomacy and Center for Vietnamese Philosophy, Culture & Society Remembering Vietnam: The Last Memoir of War in the Mekong Delta Thursday November 11, 2010 - 9:30 am - 4:30 pm Gladfelter Hall, 9th Floor, Russell Weigley Room Click here for full flyer. Contact: rimmerma@temple.edu for further details.

Conference on Conflicting Claims on the South China Sea
25 March 2010 — Gladfelter Hall, 10th Floor

Conference Program 09:30 AM - 04:30 PM &
Reception Program 06:00 PM
and
Maps and Directions & Parking

Map of Hanoi 1490
known as 昇竜 Thăng Long during the reign of 洪德 Hồng Đức

from Hoàng Thành Thăng Long [Imperial Citadel],
Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences: Institute of Archaeology.
Hanoi: Culture - Information Publishing House, 2006. Page 197.