Research Areas

20th- and 21st-century Francophone literature and culture; diaspora and migration narratives, particularly of the Vietnamese diaspora; critical refugee studies; human rights; education; food and foodways
 

Biography

I am a fourth-year student in the French Ph.D program. My primary interests lie in migration, memory, language, and food as explored in Vietnamese diasporic and 20th- and 21st-century French and Francophone literature. Critical refugee studies, contemporary affect theory, and ocean studies have been particularly useful in my examination of these topics. Coming from a family of immigrants and refugees, I strongly believe in the critical power and importance of “me-search” (cf. Nguyen 2014). I consider the intersections and tensions of my own identity as inextricable from a critical approach to literature and history.

Prior to coming to Berkeley, I received my B.A. from Hamilton College in 2018 where I simultaneously completed individual honors theses for French and Literature, both exploring the relationship between language and racial/identity formation in Asian diaspora literature (Franco/Québécois-Vietnamese and Korean American respectively). I also spent a year in Paris through Hamilton in France, studying at l’Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle – Paris III, and another year in the Occitanie region of France as a high school assistant de langue through the Teaching Assistant Program in France (TAPIF).

I care deeply about accessibility and equity, and as a Graduate Student Instructor, I hope to make the classroom environment as welcoming and inclusive as possible. My email inbox is always open to students with concerns and questions about accommodations and the classroom space.