Rate My Professor Linh Nguyen

Linh Nguyen, Ph.D., serves as Associate Professor of Vietnamese and Vietnamese Program Coordinator in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at California State University, Fullerton, a position she has held since joining the faculty in 2016. As a native speaker of Vietnamese, she brings expertise in Vietnamese language and culture to her teaching and program coordination roles. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Syracuse University, along with a B.A. in Sociology, graduating summa cum laude with high honors, a minor in Women’s Studies, Phi Beta Kappa membership, and the Irving Louis Horowitz Prize in Sociology from Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Prior to CSUF, Nguyen was a Visiting Scholar in the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University and Director of the Conflict Management Center at Syracuse University. She has taught Vietnamese language and culture courses at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, served as Teaching Assistant in Anthropology at Syracuse University and Sociology at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and acted as Vietnamese Language Program Instructor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Additionally, she contributes as a Vietnamese Expert for the National Resource Center for Asian Languages, assisting in producing and refining postsecondary Vietnamese language materials for accuracy in grammar and syntax.

Nguyen’s research specializations include rural migration and displacement in Vietnam, extramarital relationships, masculinity, and gender relations in Vietnam, transnational marriages in a global Asia, fishermen’s movements and social immobility, remittances, expectations, and suffering, morality and normalization of transnational marriages, and maritime immigration. Her key publications are “Women as Fish: Rural Migration and Displacement in Vietnam” (2016), a chapter in Disconnected in Vietnam: Remaking Social Relations in a Post-socialist Nation edited by Philip Taylor (Australian National University Press), and “Extramarital Relationships, Masculinity, and Gender Relations in Vietnam” (2009, co-authored with Jack Harris), published in Southeast Review of Asian Studies (Vol. 31). She has received major awards and fellowships such as the Dissertation Writing Award and Maxwell Dean’s Summer Research Grants from Syracuse University, Bucerius PhD Scholarship in Migration Studies and Fieldwork Grants from Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Foundation, Roscoe Martin Research Grant, Maxwell Graduate Assistantship and Teaching Assistantships, Salisbury International Internship Award, and Freeman Foundation Scholar. In 2020, she obtained a Faculty Excellence and Innovation in Diversity grant for “Hidden Connections between Vietnam and Latin-America: Designing a VIET upper-division course on diversity and inclusion.” Fluent in English and Vietnamese, Nguyen continues to advance Vietnamese studies through curriculum development and scholarly contributions.