I’ve spent my entire adult life on islands – 6 years on Taiwan and 23 years on Oahu (Hawaii) – and all of the professional knowledge that I have today was learned on those islands.
When I arrived on Taiwan in the summer of 1989, I only knew one word in Chinese – xiexie, “thank you” – and basically did not know anything about the history of any Asian society.
I’ve learned a lot since then, and I’ve also seen so much change since then.
About a week ago, historian Vũ Đức Liêm published an article in the online journal Tia Sáng on “‘Small,’ ‘Brief’ and ‘Narrow’ Histories or a Crisis of Historical Scholarship?” (Những lịch sử “nhỏ”, “ngắn”, “hẹp” hay khủng hoảng của sử học?).
In this article, Vũ Đức Liêm notes that we are living in a time when there are many people who feel that historical scholarship is facing a crisis as students do not seem to be interested in studying it, and historians have little prominence or influence in society. He examines this issue and suggests that there are types of historical scholarship that Vietnamese historians could produce that would be of more interest to the public.
There are different types of knowledge that have been (and continue to be) produced about Southeast Asia, from area studies knowledge produced in places like North America, Australia and the…
This is a discussion about how innovation in some sectors and the lack of innovation in others is transforming the academic landscape and contributing to the decline of area studies…
Plenty has been written about Confucianism in Vietnam, but I find that the studies to date (particularly those in English) have generally not examined the types of texts that can…
I've long said that Christopher Goscha's survey of Vietnamese history, Vietnam: A New History, will blow readers' minds. Well, here is video evidence of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPOwAVjrjRQ
This video is an assessment of the New Mandala blog at ANU as an example of "Content Asian Studies." For more on what I mean by "Content Asian Studies," please…
This video is about the importance of spacing out, and it also comments on Christopher Goscha's "Vietnam: A New History." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQOyUgJ5GB8
This vlog introduces and discusses a 1969 film from North Vietnam called "The Front is Calling" (Tiền Tuyến Gọi). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS2rYAPGKiI
This week's Vlog is about totems, a book by anthropologist Đinh Hồng Hải (Những biểu tượng đặc trưng trong văn hoá truyền thống Việt Nam, tập 3: Các con vật…