Warring Visions

In Warring Visions, Thy Phu explores photography from dispersed communities throughout Vietnam and the Vietnamese diaspora, both during and after the Vietnam War, to complicate narratives of conflict and memory. While the visual history of the Vietnam War has been dominated by American documentaries and war photography, Phu turns to photographs circulated by the Vietnamese themselves, capturing a range of subjects, occasions, and perspectives. Phu's concept of warring visions refers to contrasts in the use of war photos in North Vietnam, which highlighted national liberation and aligned themselves with an international audience, and those in South Vietnam, which focused on family and everyday survival. Phu also uses warring visions to enlarge the category of war photography, a genre that usually consists of images illustrating the immediacy of combat and the spectacle of violence, pain, and wounded bodies. She pushes this genre beyond such definitions by analyzing pictures of family life, weddings, and other quotidian scenes of life during the war. Phu thus expands our understanding of how war is waged, experienced, and resolved.

Performing and preserving memories: vernacular photographs in the South Vietnamese diaspora

This thesis explores how photographs from 1980-1995 of the South Vietnamese diasporic community in Orange County, California communicate selective ideas about exilic identity and memory following the militarized migration of this refugee community fleeing war. Focusing on two case studies drawn from photographs included in the Paul Tran Files and the Project Ngọc Records, the thesis investigates the (in)visible desires of the community and how such desires are (re)produced and mediated through images. Vernacular photographs of commemorative events produced by the community are crucial to our understanding of the visual tropes used to anchor the Vietnamese diasporic identity. Additionally, the photographs themselves function as a means of contesting nation building and for intergenerational transmission of memory. Just as importantly, an examination of the photographs’ multi-temporal and serial qualities reveals how youth are culturally disciplined through the gendered labour of memory keeping.

Performing and preserving memories: vernacular photographs in the South Vietnamese diaspora

This thesis explores how photographs from 1980-1995 of the South Vietnamese diasporic community in Orange County, California communicate selective ideas about exilic identity and memory following the militarized migration of this refugee community fleeing war. Focusing on two case studies drawn from photographs included in the Paul Tran Files and the Project Ngọc Records, the thesis investigates the (in)visible desires of the community and how such desires are (re)produced and mediated through images. Vernacular photographs of commemorative events produced by the community are crucial to our understanding of the visual tropes used to anchor the Vietnamese diasporic identity. Additionally, the photographs themselves function as a means of contesting nation building and for intergenerational transmission of memory. Just as importantly, an examination of the photographs’ multi-temporal and serial qualities reveals how youth are culturally disciplined through the gendered labour of memory keeping.

Wandering Money: Valuating and Mediating Post-War Remittances in Vietnam

Remittances from the Vietnamese diaspora have played an important role in Vietnam's post-Cold War economic development, providing important inputs to a range of household spending areas, from education to health care. In the case of Vietnam, however, remittances are also caught up with memories and traumas of war, betrayal, separation, and exodus. This article traces that history and illustrates how Vietnam's particular post-war refugee and remittance situations and channels illuminate networks and exacerbate inherent contradictions and comparisons in the mobile flows of finance, people, and goods across borders. Examining genealogies of remittance reception and management offers insight and intervention into analytical assumptions of the distancing and mediating functions inherent to classic conceptions of money, as well as the reciprocity and recognition perceptions mapped onto gift economies.