Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "French language Vietnam"

Of the fourteen translations of Ferdinand Oyono's une vie de boy published to date, the Vietnamese translation, Đới Làm bồi, dates last, despite Vietnam and Cameroon's shared past under French colonialism. Nguyễn Như đat, the novel's Vietnamese translator, had anticipated that his version, published in 1997, would not find much of a market. The translator's pessimism was warranted, since the Vietnam of the late 1990s drastically differed from the two Vietnams of 1956, when Oyono's novel was originally published. Partitioned after the 1954 Geneva Accords and fighting against each other in the Second Indochina War, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north and the Republic of Vietnam in the south were unified at the war's end, in 1975, under a socialist government. But since 1986 Vietnam has been engaged in the capitalist world market, albeit under the banner of socialism. Given this context of market socialism, the Vietnamese translation of Oyono's anticolonial novel seems to have lagged temporally: it was published at a time when literary translations in Vietnam began trending away from anticolonialism and toward, for example, Raymond Carver's minimalism, Haruki Murakami's surreal handling of alienation, and, more recently, Vladimir Nabokov's perversely defamiliarizing style.

Abstract French colonial rule in Vietnam (1858-1954) resulted in, for the first time, the formal education of Vietnamese girls. By the 1920s a small percentage of young Vietnamese women were enrolled in colonial schools where they learned, in addition to home economics and child rearing, the French language, French history, and French literature. As a result, they were able to read newspapers, novels, and other writings on a variety of subjects and issues. This ability thrust them into the public sphere of political debates in colonial Vietnam. A significant number of these young women were politicized in the process and expressed their political views in a number of ways, including student protests and strikes.

After war, years of hostility and a long period of gradually improving Party and state relations, the study of China has begun to re-emerge in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam has had a sinological tradition for hundreds of years, linked to China by history, language, trade, a common border and in a myriad of other ways. From the mid-1950s until the early 1970s, thousands of Vietnamese students and officials studied in the People's Republic of China. Today the People's Republic remains Vietnam's key strategic threat. But the PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong and overseas Chinese communities are also among Vietnam's key trade partners and a growing source of investment for its economic reforms.Given this close relationship – including the direct hostility in the late 1970s and early to mid–1980s, one of a series of conflicts going back hundreds of years – it is perhaps paradoxical that the study of China in Vietnam has remained relatively weak. During the war against the French which led to the founding of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and the victory at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnamese sinology was a field largely limited to one or two universities and institutes in Hanoi and some additional capacity in Hue and Saigon, with scholars trained in either the older Vietnamese or French tradition. The thousands of Vietnamese who studied in China in the 1950s and 1960s were trained largely for other fields, although Chinese studies did see some development during the 1949 to 1966 period.

Phạm Quỳnh (1893–1945), twentieth century Vietnamese intellectual and politician, is a contentious figure in Vietnamese colonial history in terms of his collaboration with the French administration. Much of the mixed opinions on his role, though gleaned from his essays and political positions, have not yet been connected to the ambiguities of the colonial reforms concurrent with his budding career. Informed by Homi Bhabha's framework of ‘mimicry’, this study offers a reading of Phạm Quỳnh's attachment to language, both tongue and discourse, to nuance his character and reveal the ambiguous articulations of French colonial policy in Vietnam.

In today’s globalized world, it seems necessary, or even indispensable for the teaching/learning of foreign languages to be based on international standards proposed by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL). The present article deals with issues of integration of the CEFRL in the Vietnamese context by analyzing the results of a study of training programs at six universities specializing in foreign languages, which are based in three regions of the country (Northern, Central and Southern Vietnam). Despite some positive changes and the dynamism characteristic of the approach, a mechanical and rigid introduction of CEFRL in foreign-language universities in Vietnam has actually caused several problems. These include (1) the inconsistency between the levels established by the CEFRL and the organization of teaching/learning; (2) the risk of teaching/learning becoming too “utilitarian” and too function-oriented and (3) excessive attention given to the evaluation and assessment of linguistic knowledge and of performance level rather than on the ability to use various resources as well as to long-term process of competence development. The study results show some possible ways for the development of a referential frame for learning/teaching French in Vietnam.

For foreign language education in Vietnam, passive teaching and learning with limited materials is thought to be associated with low achievement. This paper discusses the design and implementation of an innovative approach to guide students to build a Fun Reading Corner in foreign language using an autonomous-based approach in a Vietnam university. Survey data were collected before and after the project and from a focus group’s writing samples. The findings indicated that students’attitudes towards reading in French changed and their personal qualities and skills improved during the course. The paper concludes by explaining the significance of the results and implications for other Vietnamese foreign language programs.

Vietnamese studies in China is a contentious field that is dominated by three frameworks: the central-regional relationship, the tributary relationship, and the diffusion thesis. It emerged in the late nineteenth century in response to French scholars’ questioning of the extent and duration of Chinese influence on Vietnam. It then became highly politicized between the 1970s and 1980s due to the issues of both the ethnic origins of the bronze drum and the nature of Sino-Vietnamese relations. In the twenty-first century, even though China began to address the issue of Sinocentrism, its claim to the South China Sea has been a source of great tension among the scholars in the two communist countries.

Cette thèse a pour objectif de répondre à une demande du Vietnam de renforcer sa coopération avec les pays africains qui est encore modeste à ce jour malgré son intérêt grandissant pour ces pays. Il se trouve dans un contexte d’accélération de la mondialisation avec l’essor du capitalisme et de la langue anglaise. De nouvelles dynamiques sur la scène internationale sont observées parmi lesquelles figurent la croissance économique très élevée de certains pays du Sud (Chine, Inde, Brésil, etc.) et le développement remarquable de leur coopération avec l’Afrique. Au cœur de cette dynamique, malgré le mimétisme évident avec la Chine et d’autres pays du Sud, comme les forums de coopération avec l’Afrique, la coopération Vietnam-Afrique se distingue par la francophonie. Ce lien francophone s’est tissé à travers une histoire commune liée à la décolonisation et à une inscription au sein du Tiers-monde. Il est aujourd’hui maintenu sous un autre angle au sein de la Francophonie qui est une organisation politique et culturelle regroupant en 2016 80 États et gouvernements ayant le français en partage dont le Vietnam et une grande partie de l’Afrique. « La Francophonie contribue-t-elle à promouvoir la coopération entre le Vietnam et l’Afrique, notamment dans le domaine économique ? ». La recherche de la réponse nous conduira à étudier le rôle que jouent les aspects politique et culturel de la Francophonie dans la coopération Vietnam-Afrique, notamment dans le secteur économique. Prenant comme point de départ théorique les idées de Max Weber et de Jean Baechler sur les origines du capitalisme, nous essayerons de démontrer les potentialités et la réalité de la Francophonie dans cette coopération avant de proposer une stratégie francophone du Vietnam pour l’Afrique dans le but de renforcer son rôle. Cet exemple pourra servir ensuite de référence pour la coopération Sud-Sud francophone en particulier et celle dans le monde en général
My thesis addresses Vietnam’s request to enforce its cooperation with African countries, which at present is still modest despite its growing interest there. Vietnam finds itself in a context of accelerated globalization with the emergence of both capitalism and English language. On the international scene, new dynamics are observed, such as the strong economic growth of Southern countries like China, India and Brazil, and their remarkable cooperation with African countries. At the core of this process, what distinguishes Vietnam from other South-South cooperation is that it shares with Africa the Francophonie, a political and cultural organization gathering as of 2016, 80 States and governments who share French as a language.Their francophone bond was constructed through a common history linked to decolonization and to the fact of being both Third World countries. My work answers the following question: does Francophonie, as a cultural political construct, contribute to promote the cooperation between Vietnam and Africa, particularly in the economic sector? I use Max Weber and Jean Baeschler’s ideas on the origins of capitalism in order to demonstrate the potential and current reality of the Francophone element present in the cooperation between Vietnam and Africa before proposing Vietnam’s ‘Francophone’ strategy aiming at strengthening its role in Africa. The Vietnam-Africa cooperation may serve as a case study enabling to reflect on other francophone South-South cooperation

Sur la base d'études et d'enquêtes menées à la faculté des lettres française de l'université des sciences sociales de hochiminh-ville, l'objectif de la thèse est de fonder en théorie des modes de lecture des textes (particulièrement des textes littéraires) susceptibles d'apporter aux apprenants matière à la diversification de leurs pratiques tout en leur donnant une connaissance du rôle de la lecture dans le processus d'apprentissage du français langue étrangère (fle). Cette orientation didactique suppose la définition et l'adaptation d'un ensemble de considérations théoriques relevant de l'approche linguistique et littéraire dans le cadre spécifique des études de fle au viêtnam.une attention particulière sera accordée à l'articulation entre enseignement/apprentissage de la langue et de la grammaire et l'ensemble des facteurs cognitifs et culturels mobilisés lors de la lecture des textes littéraires, ces derniers étant saisis dans leur dimension matérielle et sociale
This thesis aims to reconsider the position and impact of literary texts in language teaching. Literary studies can be strengthened by reading literary texts, i.e. a complex activity which mobilizes at the same time non linguistic and linguistic skills, and contributes to increase the reader’s knowledge and capacities. This hypothesis is confirmed by the analysis of the result of the here proposed inquiries of ground which measure the impact of the literary reading in the learning of / in the French as a foreign language. At the same time, the accent is put on the contribution of the theories of the enunciation and the grammar of text in the service of the literary texts analysis in the aim of restoring the relation between linguistics and literature. By supplying tools of analysis, by suggesting some didactic proposals in the field of reading of literary texts, the thesis proposes examples, which highlight the fact that literature teaching consists in teaching either only works, but also way to read: it will be a question of passing from a static conception to a dynamic conception of the literature and its teaching

Cette thèse, qui s’inscrit dans le champ de la linguistique interactionnelle,présente une étude des échanges de compliments attestés dans des conversations,au cours de visites amicales en France et au Vietnam. Elle s’intéresse plus particulièrement aux réactions au compliment et à la question de la face des participants, aspects qui relèvent de la politesse linguistique. À partir de données audiovisuelles enregistrées en situation naturelle, nous avons constitué une collection d’occurrences en français et en vietnamien, et proposé une transcription détaillée des extraits retenus prenant en considération les productions verbales et la multimodalité. En recourant à l’approche comparative interculturelle, nous avons effectué une analyse interactionnelle et multimodale permettant de dégager les convergences et les divergences dans les manières de complimenter et de réagir au compliment des participants des deux corpus. Dans ces analyses, nous avons pris en compte les ressources verbales aussi bien que multimodales que les participants mobilisent dans leurs tours évaluatifs et réactifs.La première partie analytique de la thèse décrit les spécificités des types de compliment, attestés dans chacun de nos corpus. La deuxième partie,portant sur l’analyse des réactions au compliment, met en lumière les stratégies discursives auxquelles les interlocuteurs ont recours afin de concilier deux principes conversationnels contradictoires: le principe d’accord et le principe de modestie. Les réponses observées montrent d’une part certaines similitudes dans les manifestations linguistiques de la politesse dans les deux langues étudiées et d’autre part une différence importante, qui réside dans la tendance à prolonger les échanges dans le corpus vietnamien et la tendance à les minimiser dans le corpus français
Our research pertains to the field of interactional linguistics. It presents a study of compliments exchanged during conversations that occurred over the course of visits between friends in France and in Vietnam. It deals more particularly to reactions to compliments, as well as with the question of the participants' faces, which falls under the notion of linguistic politeness. Based on audiovisual data that were recorded during spontaneous conversations, we have collected a wide range of occurrences in French and Vietnamese, and proposed a detailed transcript of selected excerpts, taking into consideration verbal productions and multimodality. Using an intercultural and comparative approach, we have produced an interactional and multimodal analysis, which allowed us to point out the convergences and the divergences in the ways compliments are made and how participants from both countries react to them. These descriptions rely onverbal as well as multimodal resources used by participants in both their evaluative and reactive turns.The first part of our study describes the specifics of the various types of compliments identified in each corpus. The second part deals more specifically with the reactions to compliments. It highlights the discursive strategies that are used by interlocutors in order to reconcile two diverging conversational principles –agreement and modesty. The studied responses show on the one hand some similarities between the two languages in terms of linguistic expression of politeness, and on the otherhand a significant divergence.Conversations in the Vietnamese corpus tend to be lengthened, while in the French corpus they are likely to be shortened

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

This chapter embarks on a history of Vietnamese cinema as it developed during the Republic of Vietnam period. Due to historical circumstances, Vietnam was deeply influenced by French culture. After the French left, the Republic of Vietnam was assisted by the United States, and American films and English-language films entered the country. In the South, with nearly a million recent migrants from the North, ethnic cultural heritage still remained its unified identity. Talents came from all regions of the country. With these proper first steps, South Vietnam in the First Republic period properly inked the very first page in the history of the national film industry. In addition, the Southern government provided support to help the private cinema industry to recover. International studios were invited into Vietnam to cooperate and help develop the private cinema industry.

Based on interviews and observations of cosmetics retailers and shoppers at several malls in Ho Chi Minh City, this chapter considers how cosmetics consumption inaugurated a new form of what scholar Jonathan Reinarz termed “skinliteracy” in Vietnam. Though purchases of prestige cosmetics far outpace those of luxury clothing, sales are not easy to come by. Retailers instruct customers to consider a product’s national origins—French, Scottish, Japanese, Korean, and American products were seen as quite distinct—to ensure “suitability” (hop) with their own “Vietnamese” skin. As such, this chapterargues that the language of “land” and “landscape” that dominates discussions of cosmetics works to narrate women’s consumption as a reflection of their nation’s standing, and to foster a feeling and imagination about which nations might serve as “suitable” models and allies. In this sense, cosmetics consumption becomes a way women narrate their experiences of development and their feelings about the modernity enveloping them.

Chapter 3 looks into how the PLA established and trained the first three regular divisions, the 304th, 308th, and 312th Divisions, for the Viet Minh in China in 1950. The PLA also opened two officer academies; four communication, technology, and mechanic schools; three driving schools; two medical training centers; and six language institutes in 1951 for the Vietnam Minh. By 1952, the Chinese had provided military, technology, and professional training for 25,000 Vietnamese officers, soldiers, engineers, technicians, and medical staff in China. In August, when the Chinese Military Advisory Group (CMAG) arrived, more than 450 Chinese advisors worked with the PAVN commanders at the high command, division, regiment, and battalion levels. The PLA advisors taught the Vietnamese their successful tactics from the Chinese Civil War. They developed tactics for mobile operations and designed surprise attacks to outnumber the enemy whenever the situation permitted, in order to wipe out entire enemy units instead of simply repelling them. Chinese training, rearmament, and advisory assistance were intended to improve PAVN combat abilities in order to achieve victory by using annihilation tactics. When the PAVN launched the Border Campaign at Cao Bang in September-October 1950, they defeated the French near Cao Bang, opening transportation lines for Chinese aid.

Focusing on Khái Hưng’s Nửa chừng xuân [In the Midst of Spring], Chapter 4 examines how the author addressed the cultural translation of Europe’s first-person grammatical category, a significant marker of modern Vietnamese literature, into Vietnam’s Confucian sociolinguistic order. The chapter suggests that the cultural translation of Western individualism into the Vietnamese language was a site of gendered discrepancies and differences. In particular, the chapter examines how the colonial government’s implementation of a French educational system in place of the preexisting mandarin exam system affected women, a social group that had been excluded from the precolonial educational system.