Bibliotactics: libraries and the colonial public in Vietnam
Cindy Nguyen explores the role of public libraries in colonial and postcolonial Vietnam, examining how institutions shaped knowledge and public life.
Why we picked this
Libraries as instruments of colonial power is a lens most people have never considered. Nguyen's research reveals how the seemingly neutral act of building a public library was anything but.
Cindy Nguyen examines an overlooked dimension of colonial history: how public libraries in Vietnam served as instruments of power, shaping what people could read, learn, and think under French colonial rule and beyond. Her research reveals the library not as a neutral institution but as a site where colonial authority and local resistance played out in quiet, consequential ways.
The talk traces how these institutions evolved through independence and postcolonial nation-building, offering a case study in how cultural infrastructure carries political weight long after the regime that built it is gone.
Free and open to the public at the Allen Library, Petersen Room.