Tuong Vu
Statement
Professor Tuong Vu has taught at the University of Oregon since 2008. He has held visiting appointments at Seoul National University, Princeton University and the National University of Singapore, and taught at the Naval Postgraduate School. Vu is the founding director of the US-Vietnam Research Center based at the Global Studies Institute, University of Oregon. His research has focused broadly on the comparative politics of state formation, development, and revolutions in East and Southeast Asia, together with studies of Vietnamese nationalism, republicanism, and communism, and Vietnamese American history. He is the author and co-editor of nine books and numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Vu serves on the editorial boards of several journals and is frequently consulted by national and international media.
Publications
Vu is the author of two monographs on the politics of development, state formation, and revolution in East Asia.
His first book, Paths to Development in Asia: South Korea, Vietnam, China, and Indonesia (Cambridge University Press, 2010), presents a systematic comparison of six Asian cases combined with an in-depth analysis of Vietnam and Indonesia based on primary sources. The case studies demonstrate that patterns of state formation had decisive impacts on subsequent developmental performance. This book received an Honorable Mention in the competition for the 2011 Bernard Schwartz Book Award of the Asia Society. Link:
His second book, Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (Cambridge University Press, 2017), focuses on the evolving worldview of Vietnamese revolutionaries and shows the depth and resilience of their commitment to communist utopia in their foreign policy. The book challenges the conventional understanding of the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese revolution.
Vu is also the co-editor of seven books on Southeast Asian politics, the Cold War in Asia, the Republic of Vietnam (1955-1975), Vietnamese republicanism, contemporary Vietnamese politics and economy, and the Vietnamese American community.
Southeast Asia in Political Science: Theory, Region, and Qualitative Analysis (Stanford University Press, 2008; coedited with Erik Kuhonta and Dan Slater). This volume takes stock of scholarship on Southeast Asian politics and calls for dialogue between Southeast Asian studies and the political science discipline.
Dynamics of the Cold War in Asia: Ideology, Identity, and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; coedited with Wasana Wongsurawat). This book examines the ideologies and identities of Asian actors across Cold War camps and asserts their central role in the Cold War drama in Asia.
The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation-Building (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020; co-edited with Sean Fear). This volume presents neglected Vietnamese perspectives on dedicated efforts to build a republican, non-communist nation in South Vietnam. The perspectives come from senior officials, soldiers, educators, journalists, writers, and artists, many of whom are women.
Building a Republican Nation in Postcolonial Vietnam, 1920-1963 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2022; coedited with Nu-Anh Tran). This collection examines Vietnamese republican thought, movements, and politics in the first half of the 20th century. It challenges the prevalent communism-centric and teleological narrative about the modern Vietnamese experience.
Republican Vietnam, 1963-1975: War, Society, Diaspora (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2023; coedited with Trinh Luu). This collection shows the dynamic politics, economy, society, and culture of Republican South Vietnam as well as the impacts of war on its society. By featuring works from Vietnamese and Vietnamese diasporic studies, this volume takes the important step of bridging he two fields, laying the foundation for cross-disciplinary projects in the future.
Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2023; coedited with Linda Ho Peche and Alex-Thai Vo). This volume presents a new historiography of Vietnamese Americans and in-depth explorations into the life of this complex community, including the production of culture and preservation of memory.
The Dragon’s Underbelly: Dynamics and Dilemmas in Vietnam’s Economy and Politics (Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, 2023; coedited with Nhu Truong). The empirical and in-depth analyses in this volume explain Vietnam’s transformation since the 1980s and identify major economic and political dynamics and dilemmas facing the communist regime today.
Vu has published 30 journal articles and chapters in edited volumes, some of which are downloadable from the links below:
- "Revolution and World Order: The Case of the Islamic State (ISIS)." (with Patrick Van Orden). International Politics, May 2019.
- "State Formation on China's Southern Frontier: Vietnam as a Shadow Empire and Hegemon." HumaNetten n. 37 (December 2016), 39-65
- "The Revolutionary Path to State Formation in Vietnam: Opportunities, Conundrums, and Legacies." Journal of Vietnamese Studies 11:3-4 (December 2016), 1-31
- "The Party v. the People: The Rise of Anti-China Nationalism in Contemporary Vietnam," Journal of Vietnamese Studies 9:4 (Fall 2014), 33-66
- "Triumphs or Tragedies: A New Perspective on the Vietnamese Revolution," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 45:2 (June 2014), 236-257
- "Southeast Asia’s New Nationalism: Causes and Significance,” TRaNS: Transnational and Regional Studies of Southeast Asia 1:2 (July 2013), 259-279
- "Epdemics as Politics with Case Studies from Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.” Global Health Governance Journal 4:2 (Spring 2011), pp. 1-22.
- "Studying the State through State Formation.” World Politics 62: 1 (January 2010), pp. 148-175. This article has been translated into Chinese and published on WeChat.
- "The Vietnam War as a Vietnamese War: Agency and Society in the Study of the Second Indochina War” (with Edward Miller). Journal of Vietnamese Studies 4: 3, pp. 1-16.
- "It’s Time for the Indochinese Revolution to Show Its True Colors: The Radical Turn in Vietnamese Politics in 1948.”Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40: 3 (October 2009), pp. 519-542. (This article has been translated into Vietnamese and published in Tap Chi Talawas, Fall 2009)
- "Vietnamese Political Studies and Debates on Vietnamese Nationalism.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 2: 2 (August 2007), pp. 175-230.
- "Contentious Mass Politics in Southeast Asia: Knowledge Accumulation and Cycles of Growth and Exhaustion.”Theory and Society 35:4 (August 2006), pp. 393-419.
- "Workers and the Socialist State: North Vietnam’s State-Labor Relations, 1945-1970,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 38 (September 2005), pp. 329-356.
- "Of Rice and Revolution: The Politics of Provisioning and State-Society Relations on Java, 1945-1949,” South East Asia Research, 11:3 (November 2003), pp. 237-267.
Selected chapters in edited volumes include:
- "Persistence Amid Decay: The Communist Party of Vietnam at 83," in Jonathan London, ed. Politics in Contemporary Vietnam: Party, State, and Authority Relations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 21-41.
- "Workers under Communism: Romance and Reality,” in S. A. Smith, ed., Oxford Handbook on the History of Communism (Oxford University Press, 2014), 471-487
- "Socialism and Underdevelopment in Southeast Asia,” in Norman Owen, ed., Handbook of Southeast Asian History (Routledge, 2013), 188-198
- "Unhappy Nations: The Evolution of Modern Korea and Vietnam,” in Asia’s Middle Powers? The Identity and Regional Policy of South Korea and Vietnam, eds. Joon-Woo Park et al (Walter Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Center, 2013), 153-173
- "Indonesia’s Agrarian Movement: Anti-Capitalism at a Crossroads.” In Dominique Caouette and Sarah Turner, eds. Agrarian Angst and Resistance in Southeast Asia, pp. 180-205. New York: RoutledgeISS Studies in Rural Livelihoods, 2009.
Other publications:
- "Loi dan - Tu giai phong den giai giap, giai doc, va giai hoa: Phong trao dan toc moi o chau A," Tap chi Talawas (Fall 2009).
- "The Political Economy of Avian Influenza Response and Control in Vietnam," STEPS Centre Working Paper 19Brighton, UK 2009