Mimi Thi Nguyen
Professor
Appointments
Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Biography
My research questions emerge from the theoretical and structural antagonisms between ethnic studies and transnational feminist theories on the one hand, and liberal and neoliberal political philosophies and institutional imperatives on the other. My engagement with ethnic studies and transnational feminist cultural studies is as methods for yielding insights about historico-philosophical concepts and ontological distinctions of the human through specific studies, for instance, of labor and capital, racial liberalism, aesthetics, war and empire. That is, I understand these fields to be defined not by their objects of scholarly inquiry, but by their arguments.
In this spirit, my first book, The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages, considers the United States' geopolitical interventions in the last century, granting freedom through violence to benighted others. I observe how war and peace constitute one another by targeting the same populations for control and interference, examining a series of political and cultural encounters with the figure of the Vietnamese refugee. In this conceptual history of the gift of freedom, I argue that freedom is a force, a key transfer point between liberal ideas of the human good and liberal structures for governance and capital. Furthermore, such a gift is simultaneously the imposition of an impossible debt, and the continuous threat of its future withdrawal – a conditional state of being that is far too concrete in our contemporary moment.
In The Promise of Beauty, I argue that beauty is a fruitful concept through which we engage narratives of crisis. Such narratives name an ongoing condition or an irruptive event through which the discrepancy between the world and what ought to be so often unfolds through citing beauty –whether found in children, coral reefs, art, or rights— and what threatens its continued presence. It is on these grounds that the meeting with beauty in a bad situation lends itself to thoroughly political observation. Following and departing from philosophical and aesthetic concepts of beauty as a horizon for life –perhaps the most common feature across such theories, from Plato to Elaine Scarry, to Sianne Ngai and Martin F. Manalansan — I propose the concept of the promise of beauty as a diagnosis of the conditions beauty requires to flourish, with and against the threat of its disappearance or destruction; and as call to action to transform those conditions to sustain such life that the beautiful promises to us. That is, the promise of beauty can engender a critique of social arrangements and political structures, and also call for the reorganization of arrangements and structures in our promise to beauty – to replicate, preserve, or repair beauty, among other fulfillments. Or as Toni Morrison put so well, "Beauty was not simply something to behold, it was something one could do."
My next book project is a co-edited collection with Caren Kaplan about renowned artist Martha Rosler's House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home series of photocollages.
Education
PhD University of California, Berkeley
MA New York University
BA University of California, Berkeley
Publications
BOOKS
Mimi Thi Nguyen, The Promise of Beauty. Duke University Press, 2024.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt, and Other Refugee Passages. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012. 2014 Outstanding Book Award in Cultural Studies, Association of Asian American Studies.
EDITED VOLUMES
Patty Ahn, Michelle Cho, Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez, Rani Neutill, Mimi Thi Nguyen, and Yutian Wong, eds. Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2024.
Fiona I.B. Ngô, Mimi Thi Nguyen, and Mariam B. Lâm, eds., "Southeast Asian American Studies" Special Issue. positions: asia critique 20.3, Summer 2012.
Mimi Thi Nguyen and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, eds., Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.
JOURNAL ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS
Patty Ahn, Michelle Cho, Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez, Rani Neutill, Mimi Thi Nguyen, and Yutian Wong, "Introduction." In Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader, eds. Patty Ahn, Michelle Cho, Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez, Rani Neutill, Mimi Thi Nguyen, and Yutian Wong. Durham: Duke University Press, 2024.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Jungkook's Button, or The Gif That Keeps On Giving." In Bangtan Remixed: A Critical BTS Reader, eds. Patty Ahn, Michelle Cho, Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez, Rani Neutill, Mimi Thi Nguyen, and Yutian Wong. Durham: Duke University Press, 2024.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Eventfulness of Incomplete Presence, Or No One Turned Away for Lack of Future." In Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines, eds. Drew Sawyer and Brandon Joseph. New York City: Brooklyn Museum and Phaidon, 2024.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Foreword." In Surviving the Future: Queer Abolitionist Strategies, ed. Scott Branson, Raven Hudson, Bry Reed. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2023.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Getting Over Ourselves." In "Reckoning with the Interdiscipline" special issue, Journal of Asian American Studies 25(2), 2022. 343-350.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Zine." In Keywords for Comics Studies, edited by Ramzi Fawaz, Shelley Streeby, and Deborah Whaley. New York: NYU Press, 2021. 223-228.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Experience." In Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, edited by Aren Aizura, Karma Chavez, Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Mishuana Goeman, Amber Musser, Shona Jackson, and Aimee Bahng. New York: NYU Press, 2021. 85-88.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Minor Threats." In Perverse Assemblages: Queering Heteronormativity Inter/Medially, Berlin, Germany: Revolver Publishing, 2018. 115-123.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Profiling Surfaces." In The Funambulist Papers, Vol. 2, edited by Leopold Lambert. New York: Punctum Books, 2015. 8-13.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Minor Threats." In "Queering Archives" Special Issue, edited by Kevin Murphy, Daniel Marshall, and Zeb Tortorici, Radical History Review 122 (May 2015): 11-24.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Hoodie as Sign, Screen, Expectation, and Force." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 40:4 (Summer 2015): 791-816. Included as a free PDF in the Signs open-access virtual issue, "Feminist Resources for #TheResistance," Summer 2017, and again in the virtual issue, "Black Lives Matter," Summer 2020.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Diasporic Erotic: Love, Loss, and the Copy." Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 28:1 (May 2013): 68-101.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Riot Grrrl, Race, and Revival." "Punk Anteriors: Genealogy, Performance, Theory" Special Issue, edited by Beth Stinson and Fiona I.B. Ngô, Women & Performance 22:2-3 (July-November 2012): 173-196.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Biopower of Beauty: Humanitarian Imperialisms and Global Feminisms in the War on Terror." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 26.2 (Winter 2011): 359-383.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Race and Riot Grrrl." In Riot Grrrl Revisited: Die Geschichte einer Bewegung, eds. Katja Peglow and Jonas Engelman. Berlin: Ventil Verlag, 2011.
Mimi Nguyen, "It's (Not) a White World: Looking for Race in Punk." In White Riot: Punk Rock and the Politics of Race, eds. Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremblay, New York: Verso, 2011. pp. 256-268.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Bruce Lee I Love You: Discourses of Race and Masculinity in the Queer Superstardom of JJ Chinois." In Alien Encounters: Popular Culture in Asian America, co-edited with Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. pp. pp. 271-304.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "'In the arms of Pirates, Under the bodies of Sailors:' Diaspora, Desire, and Danger in Nguyen Tan Hoang's PIRATED!" In Charlie Don't Surf: Four Vietnamese American Artists, ed. Viet Le, Centre A., Vancouver, 2005. pp. 66-75.
Selected Works & Activities
CREATIVE NON-FICTION
Toby Beauchamp, Sawyer K. Kemp, Ava L.J. Kim, Damian Vergara Bracamontes, and Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Trans Studies Syllabus for Bullshit Times," Abusable Past (Radical History Review), May 18, 2023: https://www.radicalhistoryreview.org/abusablepast/trans-studies-syllabu…
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "On Anti-Asian Violence: A Statement from Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Forum: Anti-Asian Violence, Society & Space, March 22, 2021: https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/uiuc-statement
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Dowreh Series: Mimi Thi Nguyen and Minoo Moallem in Conversation." In Jadaliyya, March 8, 2021: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/42477/Dowreh-Mimi-Thi-Nguyen-and-Mino…
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Mimi Thi Nguyen in Conversation with Lauren O'Neill-Butler." In November Mag, November 2020: https://novembermag.com/contents/7
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "In Defense Of." In The Funambulist 25, September-October 2019: 26-29.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Untitled." In Dark Lens/ Lente ng Karimlan: The Filipino Camera in Duterte's Republic (online exhibition). Co-curated by Nerissa S. Balce, Pia Arboleda, and Francine Marquez. 2019.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Government Might Not Love You, But I Do." In ArtLeaks Gazette 5, April 2019: 70-72.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Dressed Down: The Politics of Hijab." In ARTFORUM 55(10), 2017: 290-293.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Right to Be Beautiful." In The Account Magazine, Spring 2016. Online: https://theaccountmagazine.com/article/the-right-to-be-beautiful/
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Refugee." In "Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health," eds. Mimi Khuc and Lawrence-Minh Bui Davis, Asian American Literary Review, Spring 2017.
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "Preface." In The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band, Michelle Cruz Gonzalez. Oakland: PM Press, 2016. pp. xv-xviii.
"Toilet Training: Interview with Dean Spade and Craig Willse," in Toilet Training Toolkit: The Companion Guide for Activists and Educators, Sylvia Rivera Law Project. New York: 2010.
EXHIBITIONS
Inclusion in group show, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," Kawakami Laboratory, Kurashiki University of Science and the Art, Tsurajimacho, Japan, 2025
Inclusion in group show, "Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines," Brooklyn Museum, New York City, New York, 2023-2024
Inspiration for "Moving Targets," Arnolfini Museum, Bristol, UK, 2016
Inclusion in group show, "Alien She," Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA, 2014-2015
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