SAVE THE DATE BEFORE SPRING BREAK!
Friday, 3/28 @ 4:00pm in HBL Class of 1947 Room
YEN LE ESPIRITU, University of California at San Diego
“CRITICAL REFUGEE STUDIES: Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es)”
Situating Vietnamese refugees within the longue duree of U.S. military colonialism in Asia, this talk argues that the refugees, as the widely publicized objects of U.S. rescue fantasies, have ironically become the featured evidence of the appropriateness and necessity of the U.S. war in Vietnam. Charting an interdisciplinary field of critical refugee study, Prof. Le Espiritu re-conceptualizes “the refugee” as a site of social and political critique. While most writings on the Vietnam War mourn American losses, the costs borne by the Vietnamese – the war witnesses, survivors and their families, both in Vietnam and in the Diaspora – linger long after the supposed ending of the war. Against the dominant remembering of the “Fall of Saigon: in April 1975, we ask: when does war end and who gets to decide?
Co-sponsored by Department of Sociology, this is an Honors designated event.
For more information, contact: Ms. Fe Delos-Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu