Graduate Directory

Summary of Expertise

Trung PQ Nguyen is a Ph.D candidate in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and received an MA in Asian American Studies at UCLA. His dissertation, “War Material: Transpacific Imaginaries of Capital and Transition” studies the libidinal and political economy of post-war visual culture. This dissertation argues that the abundant archive of Vietnamese death and suffering are deployed as a sense-making practice and aesthetic regime that obscures and legitimizes the state monopolization of violence in an age of perpetual war. Collating contemporary art, refugee narratives, journalism, and urban space, this dissertation expands how we understand the necrocapitalist function and aesthetics of war's protracted afterlives; in other words, how racialized subjects are made more valuable in death than life.

Biography, Education and Training

Rent Burden: 64% (what’s this?)

Graduate students at UC Santa Cruz face severe rent burden, often spending over 50% of our income on housing. We are precarious, but we are indispensable.

I stand in solidarity with the COLA campaign.

2014, MA, Asian American Studies (Gender Studies Concentration), UCLA

2012, BA, Asian American Studies, UCLA

Honors, Awards and Grants

2019-20, Managing Editor, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal

2017-18, Managing Editor, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 

2017-18, Fellow-in-Residence, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, UC Berkeley 

Teaching Interests

Asian American Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Refugee Studies, Southeast Asian Diasporas, Critical Race/Ethnic Studies, Queer of Color Critique, Women of Color Feminism, Sexual Cultures, Science and Technology Studies