Anh Le
Education
- Ph.D., Michigan State University
- M.A., University at Buffalo, State University of New York
- B.A., Wabash College
Teaching Interests
My teaching is shaped by my scholarly focus on mobility and migratory networks, which leads me to emphasize transnational and comparative approaches to history. Across my courses, I invite students to think beyond borders and to question the essentialist categories often reinforced by nation-centered narratives of history and identity. At Muhlenberg, I teach courses on China (traditional and modern), modern East Asia, the Vietnam War, Asian American history, and a range of thematic offerings including Chinese gender and women’s history, comparative empires, the history of capitalism in Asia, and global migration. All of my courses are interdisciplinary in nature, contributing to Asian Studies, International Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Sustainability Studies.
Research and Scholarship
I am a social and political historian specializing in Chinese migration across maritime East and Southeast Asia. My research examines the complex—and often contentious—relationships between European colonial powers, particularly the French empire in Vietnam, and the influential Chinese diaspora in southern Vietnam (formerly French Cochinchina). Grounded in extensive archival work conducted between 2016 and 2021 in China, Singapore, Vietnam, and France, my scholarship traces how mobility, commerce, and community formation shaped colonial governance and trans-regional politics across Southeast Asia’s port-cities.
I am completing several concurrent projects. My book manuscript examines key domains of Chinese diasporic social and economic interactions in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Vietnam, arguing that the evolution of migrant networks and Sino-French entanglements profoundly reshaped colonial politics and contributed to the making of the French empire in the region. I am also developing an article on the Chinese diaspora in the Third Indochina War, exploring the political and social stakes of displacement, belonging, and state power in a period of regional conflict. In addition, I am writing a teaching-focused article that centers diaspora and mobility as an organizing lens for studying Sino–Southeast Asian interactions. I have published in flagship peer-reviewed journals, special issues, and book chapters.
- FYS: East Asia in Ten Words
- Gender and Women in Chinese History
- International Studies Independent Study/Research - Leftover Women and Last
- International Studies Independent Study/Research: Leftover Women and Last
- Modern China
- Modern East Asia
- Spc: Asian Americans: A Transnational History
- Spc: War, Society, and Culture: The Vietnam-American War
- Summer Research Grant, 2025
- MTCL Pedagogy Development Grant, 2025
Entangled Histories: Chinese Migration, Inter-Asian Connections, and Empire Building in French Colonial Vietnam. Manuscript in Preparation.
“From Subjects to Subversives: Chinese Migrants and the Evolution of the French Colonial Surveillance Regime in Saigon-Cholon, 1874-1930” Asian Ethnicity, Special Issue: Co-Producing Ethnicity in Urban Asia, Vol. 24, Issue 4, (June 16, 2023), 544-570.
“Mortal Remains as Biohazard: Chinese Repatriation, Plague Epidemiology, and Biopolitical Governance in Sài Gòn–Chợ Lớn, 1890–1898.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Special Issue: Biopolitical Vietnam, Vol. 18, no. 1–2 (May 1, 2023): 15–60.
“The Studies of Chinese Diasporas in Colonial Southeast Asia: Theories, Concepts, and Histories.” China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies, No. 2 (December 20, 2019): 225–63.
“The ‘Orientals’ Strike Back: Displacement, Diasporic Resistance, and Spatial Justice in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire,” Journal of Migration History, 4 (2018): Special Issue: Cities and Overseas Migration in the Long Nineteenth Century, 134-160.
“Trade, Colonialism, and Diaspora: Chinese Rice Commerce and the Transformation of Saigon-Cholon in Colonial Vietnam,” in Chapters on Asia: Selected Papers from the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowships (2020), Singapore: National Library Board, 2021.
Review of Nu-Anh Tran, Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2022, Journal of Asian Studies 1 November 2023; 82 (4): 771-773.
Review of Christina Firpo, The Uprooted: Race, Children, and Imperialism in French Indochina, 1890-1980, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2016, Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, August 2018, 262-264.
Review of Micheline Lessard, Human Trafficking in Colonial Vietnam, New York: Routledge, 2015, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 12, Issue 4, 106-110, 2017.
Asian Studies
History
International Studies
Sustainability Studies
Women's and Gender Studies
Professional website: https://anhsyhuyle.owlstown.net/
Contact: anhle@muhlenberg.edu