Minh Thi Nguyen, Toward A Harmonious Transnational Feminism: Women's Love/Lot/Lack In Antigone By Sophocles And The Tale Of Kieu By Nguyen Du

Date
Fri February 3rd 2023, 12:00 - 1:00pm
Event Sponsor
Department of Classics
Location
Building 110
450 Jane Stanford Way Building 110, Stanford, CA 94305
112

Description: Since the early nineteenth century, The Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du has been considered an important cultural heritage that could save both the Vietnamese language and country, even as everything else collapsed. The history of creating, using and interpreting this national work has previously been the domain of male authors, translators, commentators and scholars. In the West, although there is a longer history of feminist readings of Antigone, the recent influential feminist interpretations of Antigone have mainly used models of masculine subjects by approaching Antigone as an individual trying to appropriate masculine status instead of looking into her feminine position and characteristics. In this talk, I will present some ideas from my book-length study to look at Antigone and Kieu from a comparative perspective as harmonious subjects. Seeing the two main characters as woman refugees facing and resisting forced division brought about by patriarchal systems in different types of war, this perspective aims to propose a harmonious feminism to answer the concerns of Spivak about the death of comparative literature and Judith Butler’s question about feminist forms of alliance.

Biography: Nguyen Thi Minh, a Fulbright research scholar at the Asian American Studies Department, UCLA, is a tenured lecturer in the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature Studies, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education. Her main research interests are comparative literature, and film adaptation based on gender studies and semiotics. She is on the forefront of initiatives to cultivate Gender Studies in Vietnam, and to that end has worked with the Vietnam’s Women Publishing House to build Women’s Book: Gender and Development series. This series critically addresses women’s history and gender inequities, advancing a feminist agenda amidst Vietnam’s current socioeconomic development. She is also a translator, co-translator and editor of many classical book translation in philosophy, gender and cultural studies. She translated Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt (Knowledge Publishing House, 2020); History of Philosophy, volume 2) by Johannes Hirschberger (co-translation, Knowledge Publishing House, 2020); Antigone’s Claim by Judith Butler (Vietnam Women's Publishing House, 2021); A History of the Breasts by Marilyn Yalom (Vietnam Women's Publishing House, 2022); Key Concepts in Gender Studies by Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan (Vietnam Women's Publishing House, 2022). She has also edited and annotated Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler (Vietnam Women's Publishing House, 2022). She won the Best Translated Book Award in Vietnam in 2022 for Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt. Regarding community services, she is the co-founder of The Ladder, a community learning space where academic knowledge is shared and made more accessible for everyone, especially the youth in Vietnam.

WORKSHOP: VOICES AND BOUNDARIES OF TRANSLATION: In the workshop, I will share my reflections on translation as a scholar who has translated many works in philosophy, gender and cultural studies from English into Vietnamese. Workshop participants will read selected readings and discuss the possibilities and limitations of translation as an activity that can both break and create boundaries. Reflective and reflexive perspectives on translation enable us to challenge the powers that divide and decide the world, while also opening up new horizons of culture.

The workshop will take place between 3-4:30pm in Building 110 Room 112 on the same day of the talk (2/3/23)

Lunch will be provided at event. This event will not be available via zoom and will not be recorded.