Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an assistant professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her PhD in rhetoric with a designated emphasis in critical theory in 2018 and served as the inaugural postdoctoral teaching fellow of Asian American and Asian diaspora studies at the College of the Holy Cross during AY 2018-19. Her interdisciplinary research traces the ways in which Vietnamese refugees, and "Vietnam" as a rhetorical signifier, circulate around the globe.

Current Work:

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi's book manuscript, tentatively entitled "Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers in Guam and Israel-Palestine," examines the Vietnamese refugee diaspora in Guam and Israel-Palestine as a means to trace two forms of critical geography: first, archipelagos of empire — how the Vietnam War is linked to US military build-up in Guam and unwavering support of Israel; and second, corresponding archipelagos of resistance — how Chamorro decolonization efforts and Palestinian liberation struggles are connected via the Vietnamese refugee figure. This project examines what Dr. Gandhi calls the "refugee settler condition": the vexed positionality of refugee subjects whose very condition of political legibility via citizenship is predicated upon the unjust dispossession of an Indigenous population. Her second book-length project, "Revisiting the Southern Question: South Korea, South Vietnam, and the American South," maps transnational intimacies and strange affinities between these three spaces marked by US militarism, civil war, and what Gramsci referred to as a "southern politics." It asks: How were South Korea, South Vietnam, and the American South connected during the Cold War period? What are the political, cultural, and affective afterlives of these historical encounters?

Research Area Keyword(s):

Asian American studies, critical refugee studies, settler colonial studies, Vietnam War