New SEA Faculty at UCI

It is a pleasure to welcome two new faculty members to UCI who will be teaching classes in Southeast Asian American studies and Vietnamese language.

Linda Trinh Vo has been appointed an assistant professor of Asian American Studies with a focus on Southeast Asian Americans. She comes to UCI from previous teaching positions at Washington State University and Oberlin College. Her background is in Sociology, and she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1995. Her publication areas include Vietnamese Americans, Asian American women, ethnographic practices, pan-Asian mobilization, and community studies. Her current projects include a co-edited special issue on Asian American women for Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies and a book manuscript, Constructing identity , community, and organization: Asian American mobilization in San Diego.

Tri C. Tran has been appointed lecturer in the East Asian Languages and Literatures Department and is teaching three classes of Vietnamese during fall quarter. UCI students have been advocating for Vietnamese language classes for ten years. However, this is the first time that Vietnamese language classes are being offered as part of an organized language program at UCI during the regular academic year. Special thanks are due to Chancellor Cicerone, the School of Humanities, the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, and the Program in Asian American Studies for making these classes a reality.

UCI is not new to Dr. Tran as he received his B.A. in Spanish from UCI in 1994. He also became a member of Phi Beta Kappa the same year. He went on to UCLA to earn a M.A. in 1996 and a Ph.D. in Romance Linguistics and Literature in 1999. Dr. Tran also teaches Vietnamese at Santa Ana College, and has been an instructor in Spanish at various community colleges and in the CSU system. He has published short stories in Vietnamese in the Canadian magazine, Lang Van and has translated works from English to Vietnamese.