Welcome to the third event of the "After Area Studies" series, featuring Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, author of Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam. Thuy Ling Nguyen Tu is Professor of American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. She is the author of Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (Duke UP, 2021) and The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion (Duke UP, 2011), as well as co-editor of the volumes, Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia, Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America, and Technicolor: Race and Technology in Everyday Life. Her work has explored the significance of aesthetics and race within different configurations of popular culture and historical imagination. Most recently, Professor Tu won the R.R. Hawkins prize from the Association of American Publishers for her book "Experiments in Skin" which links the history of warfare and beauty between the US and Vietnam.

Our inaugural series last year, Asia America and the World, located “Asia” as prism and framework to think about empire, race, diaspora, and contemporary politics of violence. This year’s series After Area Studies continues the important work established last year, bringing a new format of “conversations” into the fold. Distinguished scholars of transpacific history, media, race, critical refugee studies and visual culture will present their work and share their perspectives on how to study the contemporary global moment beyond the disciplinary confines of traditional area studies. This series explores the work of centering Asia, its peoples, its diasporas, and its historical legacies and ongoing contributions. We invite our speakers to situate their work in relation to key debates and explorations between Asian Studies, Asian American studies and emerging fields; to consider how scholarship intersects with activism and social justice work; and to think about the political, intellectual, and ethical needs of scholarship now and in the future.

After Area Studies Lecture Series: Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu