Calendar
Events Calendar
Experiments in Skin: Thuy Linh Tu Book Talk
Thursday, March 10, 2022, 11:00am - 12:00pm
Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam
Thuy Linh Tu
Professor of American Studies
Department of Social and Cultural Analysis
New York University
Book Talk
March 10, 11 AM – noon
RCHA Seminar Room (6051)
Academic Building-West Wing
15 Seminary Pl
Hybrid: In-person and virtual
Graduate Students Meet & Greet Lunch
March 10, noon-1 PM
301 Van Dyck Hall
16 Seminary Pl
Email
Cold War Asias Working Group Capstone Event
Sponsored by Global Asias Initiative and Department of History
Thuy Linh Tu is Professor of American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU, where she also serves as the faculty director of the Prison Education Program's Research Collective. She is the author of Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (Duke UP, 2021) and The Beautiful Generation: Asian Americans and the Cultural Economy of Fashion (Duke UP, 2011), and co-editor of the volumes, Fashion and Beauty in the Time of Asia, Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America, and Technicolor: Race and Technology in Everyday Life. Her current research project, "The Chinese in Indian Land," examines the "insourcing" of textile manufacturing from China to the U.S. south and the shifting meanings of race and region at the twilight of U.S. industrialization.
In Experiments in Skin Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu examines the ongoing influence of the Vietnam War on contemporary ideas about race and beauty. Framing skin as the site around which these ideas have been formed, Tu foregrounds the histories of militarism in the production of US biomedical knowledge and commercial cosmetics. She uncovers the efforts of wartime scientists in the US Military Dermatology Research Program to alleviate the environmental and chemical risks to soldiers' skin. These dermatologists sought relief for white soldiers while denying that African American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians were also vulnerable to harm. Their experiments led to the development of pharmaceutical cosmetics, now used by women in Ho Chi Minh City to tend to their skin, and to grapple with the damage caused by the war's lingering toxicity. In showing how the US military laid the foundations for contemporary Vietnamese consumption of cosmetics and practices of beauty, Tu shows how the intersecting histories of militarism, biomedicine, race, and aesthetics become materially and metaphorically visible on skin.
:
Flyer: Thuy_Linh_Tu_Cold_War_Asias_Working_Group_March_10_2022.pdf
