Nu-Anh Tran

Assistant Professor of History and Asian and Asian American Studies

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Growing up in Seattle’s Vietnamese-American community inspired Nu-Anh Tran’s interest in Vietnamese history and the Vietnam War. A joint appointment in the Department of History, her research interests broadly include the political, intellectual, and cultural history of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) from 1954 to 1975. Her first book, Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam, 1954-1963, examines factionalism among anticommunists and the political culture of authoritarianism and democracy during the presidency of Ngô Đình Diệm. Her second book project, Nationalists at War: Tales of Revolution and Betrayal in the Republic of Vietnam, explores the historical and literary narratives that sustained cycles of violence between communist and anticommunist nationalists to show how the Vietnam War originated as a domestic conflict predating American intervention. She is currently completing articles on the connection between RVN politics and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Vietnamese debates over artistic and political freedom in the 1950s. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and her BA from Seattle University. Before coming to UConn, Nu-Anh taught at the Asian University for Women in Chittagong, Bangladesh, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies, Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan.

Selected Publications:

Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press in partnership with the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, forthcoming 2021.

Rethinking Republican Vietnam: Ideological and Institutional Foundations of the First Republic, 1920-1963. Collection of essays co-edited with Tuong Vu. (under review at academic press)

“‘Let History Render Judgment on My Life’: The Suicide of Nhất Linh Nguyễn Tường Tam and the Making of a Martyr in the Republic of Vietnam.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 15, no. 3 (August 2020): 79-118.

“The Neglect of the Republic of Vietnam in American Historical Memory: A Historian’s Appeal to the Vietnamese-American Community,” in The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975, ed. Sean Fear and Tuong Vu, 173-78 (Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, forthcoming 2020).

Vietnamese version: “Việt Nam Cộng Hòa bị bỏ quên trong ký ức lịch sử Hoa Kỳ,” trans. Anonymous, Trần Quang Lâm, and Trần Nữ-Anh, in Việt nam Cộng hoà, 1955-1975: Kinh nghiệm Xây dựng Quốc gia dưới Chính thể Cộng hoà, ed. Sean Fear and Tuong Vu (under review).

“Add Vietnamese People and Stir?: A Reflection on Burns’s and Novick’s The Vietnam War and a Call for New Interpretations,” Diplomatic History 42, no. 3 (June 2018): 406-10.

“South Vietnamese Identity, American Intervention and the Newspaper Chính Luận [Political Discussion], 1965-1969.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1, no. 1-2 (February/August 2006): 169-209.

Media Appearances

Roundtable discussion of “The Vietnam War” by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC. 29 September 2017. Full remarks available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HfLCMEkrz8

Courses: 

HIST 1203 Women in History

HIST 3101W History Through Fiction

HIST 3842 History of Vietnam

HIST 3845 History of the Vietnam War

HIST 5195 Comparative Theories of Nationalism