Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi
Associate Professor
Areas of Interest: Vietnam War refugees
Curriculum VitaeBiography
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (Tovaangar). Her interdisciplinary research engages critical refugee studies, comparative ethnic studies, and transpacific studies. Dr. Gandhi’s first book, Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine (2022), is published open access by the University of California Press. It examines Vietnamese refugee resettlement in Guam and Israel-Palestine as a means to trace two forms of critical geography: first, archipelagos of empire — how the Vietnam War is linked to US military build-up in Guam and unwavering support of Israel; and second, corresponding archipelagos of resistance — how Chamorro decolonization efforts and Palestinian liberation struggles are connected via the Vietnamese refugee figure. This project analyzes what she calls the “refugee settler condition”: the vexed positionality of refugee subjects whose very condition of political legibility via citizenship is predicated upon the unjust dispossession of an Indigenous population. Dr. Gandhi is the co-editor with Vinh Nguyen of The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives (2023). She is currently working on a second book project which revisits Gramsci’s “southern question” by constellating the southern spaces of South Korea, South Vietnam, and the US South during the Cold War and its afterlives. You can check out Dr. Gandhi’s films on Vimeo. She also hosts a podcast, Distorted Footprints, through her Critical Refugee Studies class. During the 2024-25 year, Dr. Gandhi serves as an External Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center. She is the lead curator of a public history exhibit, “Remembering Saigon: Journeys through and from Guam,” which is on view at UC Irvine’s Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive Center through May 2025.
Education
BA, Pomona College, History and Media Studies, 2013
PhD, University of California, Berkeley, Rhetoric, 2018
Research Interests
critical refugee studies, settler colonial studies, transpacific studies, comparative ethnic studies, US empire, transnational feminism, critical theoryPublications
- “Transpacific Archipelagic Poetics: Connecting Antibase Activism in Okinawa with Military Buildup Protests in Guåhan.” In Transpacific, Undisciplined, ed. Lily Wong, Christopher B. Patterson, and Chien-ting Lin. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 133-159.
- “Toward an Archipelagic Praxis and Method: Solidarity, Storytelling, and Decolonization across Global Asias,” co-authored with Adrian De Leon, Thiti Jamkajornkeiat, Sarah Ihmoud, and Tiara R. Na’puti, Verge: Studies in Global Asias 10, no. 2 (Fall 2024): 2-42.
- The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives, co-edited with Vinh Nguyen. Routledge, 2023
- “Icon of Solidarity: The Revolutionary Vietnamese Woman in Vietnam, Palestine, and Iran,” co-authored with Thy Phu and Donya Ziaee. In Cold War Camera, ed. Thy Phu, Andrea Noble, and Erina Duganne. Durham: Duke University Press, 2023: 67-112.
- “Afro-Asian Intimacies across Southern Cartographies: Race, Sex, and Gender in Toni Morrison’s Home and Yusef Komunyakaa’s Dien Cai Dao,” American Studies (AMSJ) 61, no. 3 (2022): 97-120.
- “Southern Memory, Southern Metaphor: Representing South Vietnam through the US South.” American Quarterly 74, no. 3 (Sept. 2022): 591-614.
- “Indigenous Soldiering: Chamoru, Māori, and Hmong Narratives of the Trans-Pacific Vietnam War.” Critical Ethnic Studies 7, no. 2 (2022): https://doi.org/10.
5749/CES.0702.08. - Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine. University of California Press, 2022.
- “Historicizing the Transpacific Settler Colonial Condition: Asian-Indigenous Relations in Shawn Wong’s Homebase and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer.” MELUS 45, no. 4 (Winter 2020): 49-71.
- “Queer Love across Queer Time: Nonaligned Solidarity, Indigenous Incommensurability, and the Temporal Drag of the Vietnam War.” Critical Ethnic Studies 5, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 99-123.
- “Cold War Entanglements, Third World Solidarities: Vietnam and Palestine, 1967-75.” In “Vietnam, War, and the Global Imagination,” edited by Timothy K. August, Evyn Lê Espiritu, and Vinh Nguyen, Canadian Review of American Studies 48, no. 3 (2018): 352-386.
- “Vexed Solidarities: Vietnamese Israelis and the Question of Palestine.” LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 29, no. 1 (2018): 8-28.
- “ ‘Who Was Colonel Hồ Ngọc Cẩn?’: Queer and Feminist Practices for Exhibiting South Vietnamese History on the Internet.” Amerasia Journal 43, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 3-24.
Public Scholarship
- “Palestine is Today’s Vietnam,” Social Text: Palestine Now, 7 December 2023
- “Refugee Settlers in Guam and Palestine,” KPFA 94.1 Radio, Against the Grain, 6 November 2023
- “The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives,” UNESCO-RILA: The Sounds of Integration Podcast, Invited Discussant for Episode 58 (2023)
- “Bringing migrant and refugee stories – and connections – to light,” UCLA Newsroom, Invited Interviewee (2023)
- “Revisiting the Southern Question both in the US and South Vietnam,” Vietnam Veterans News Podcast, Invited Interviewee for Episode 2459 (2023)
- “Archipelago of Resettlement: Decolonization, Guam and Israel-Palestine (Feat. Dr. Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi),” Leading By History Podcast, Invited Interviewee for Season 4, Episode 7 (2023)
- “Interview with renowned author Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi,” Vietnam Veterans News Podcast, Invited Interviewee for Episode 2429 (2022)
- “Remembering Saigon: From Vietnam to Guam.” Public History Exhibit, Guam, Project Scholar (2022)
- “Archipelago of Resettlement.” New Books Network Podcast, Invited Interviewee (2022)
- “Revisiting the Southern Question.” Georgia Review, literary article on second book project (2022)
- “Vietnamese ‘Refugee Settlers’ in Guåhan and Palestine.” Funambulist Podcast, Invited Interviewee for Episode 149 (2022)
- “Operation New Life.” Memoirs Pasifika Podcast, Invited Anchor for Episode 3 (2021)
- “Toward a New Afro-Asian Solidarity: Revisiting Cold War Politics in DA 5 BLOODS, WATCHMEN, and LOVECRAFT COUNTRY.” Heung | 흥 Coalition, co-written article with Rachel Lim (2020)
- “STORY // Evyn L. E.” Refugene, Invited Interviewee (2019)
- “Rewind Special Edition: Operation New Life, Part 3—Lone Sailor Statue to Come to Guam.” Joint Region Marianas, Invited “Vietnamese Diaspora Expert” for TV series on Operation New Life (2018)
- “History, Diaspora, and Politics.” Ottoman History Podcast, Invited Interviewee for Episode 332 (2017)
- “Visions of Palestine: Shorts from the 10th Boston Palestine Film Festival.” East Meets West, Blog Post (2016)
- “Vietnam In and With Palestine.” Students for Justice in Palestine, Johns Hopkins University, Featured Speaker (2016)
- “Evyn Lê Espiritu Reflects on VietAID in Fields Corner, Boston.” diaCRITICS, Blog Post (2014)
Awards
• Stanford Humanities Center External Faculty Fellowship (2024-25)
• Asian American Studies Graduate Student Association Annual Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring and Teaching, UCLA (2021)
• Faculty Career Development Award, UCLA (2020-21)
• UC Irvine Global Scholars Early Career Fellowship (2020)
• American Studies Association (ASA) Critical Ethnic Studies Prize (2017)
• Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship (2016-18)
• Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Best Graduate Student Paper (2016)
• American Studies Association (ASA) Critical Ethnic Studies Prize Finalist (2016)
• Regents Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley (2013-15)
• Phi Beta Kappa Graduate Studies Award, Pomona College (2013)
