Colonized by China for a millennium, by France for a century, and at war with the United States for two decades, Vietnam tends to evoke ideas of oppression and destruction for many, especially those in the West. However, Vietnam has been a crossroads of empires—as well as a colonizing empire in itself—and therefore it has been a site of rich cross-cultural intellectual engagement. In this book-launch, Kevin Pham presents his new book, The Architects of Dignity, and will be joined by Yen Vu, a professor at Fulbright University Vietnam. They will talk about the intergenerational debate Pham researches in his book, about competing visions for how the Vietnamese should respond to French colonial domination, what the Vietnamese should do with their traditions given the influx of political and social ideas from the West, and how they should harness feelings of national shame to construct national dignity.

About the speakers

Kevin Pham is an Assistant Professor of Political Theory at the University of Amsterdam. His research explores the history of nineteenth and twentieth century political thought, focusing on how ideas of democracy, freedom, and revolution travel across cultures and are adapted by thinkers outside “the West.” He has special interests in Vietnamese and East Asian political thought. The Architects of Dignity: Vietnamese Visions of Decolonization is his first book.

Yen Vu is a faculty member at Fulbright University Vietnam, where she teaches modern Vietnamese literature. Her research focuses on 20th century Vietnamese and French intellectual politics as well as Southeast Asian ecocriticism. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Environmental Humanities, and elsewhere. She also co-hosts a mainstay podcast for the Vietnam studies and Vietnamese American community, called Nam Phong Dialogues.

Rimko van der Maar is an Assistant Professor in History of International Relations at the University of Amsterdam. His dissertation (Utrecht University 2007) covers the Netherlands and the Vietnam War. He specializes in the history of Dutch diplomacy and foreign relations, particularly during the Cold War, and in Third World solidarity movements from the 1950’s to 1970’s. His new book, In de ban van Vietnam. De Vietnamese onafhankelijkheidsstrijd en het Westen (to be released in 2025), is written for a broad Dutch audience and discusses North and South Vietnamese propaganda strategies during the Vietnam War.