During this workshop, participants will give feedback on Nguyễn Thị Minh’s paper entitled “Women’s Love in Antigone by Sophocles and The Tale of Kiều by Nguyễn Du.” The paper will be circulated one week in advance. Engaging feminist scholarship, the paper critiques how Antigone has previously been read within a Eurocentric frame and masculine model of subjectivity while Kiều has been positioned within a male-centered interpretive history in both Vietnam and the US. While Antigone is seen as “the hope” of feminism (Bonnie Honig 2013, 36) and “the occasion for a new field of human” (Judith Butler 2000, 82), Kiều’s story is viewed as conveying “a message of hope” for both the individual and the country of Vietnam (Huynh Sanh Thong 1983). Drawing on feminist philosophical reflections on love and utilizing the perspectives of women thinkers such as Maria Lugones, bell hooks, and Trinh Thi Minh-ha, the paper analyzes the possibilities of women’s love evoked by the figures of Kiều and Antigone in the two works. Highlighting the experiences of harmonious subjects who are moving beyond the private realm into the public sphere, these works offer new potentials for resistance and reflections on love. From this, the paper proposes a direction towards a “harmonious feminism” as an alternative projection for the future of feminism.

Nguyễn Thị Minh, a Fulbright research scholar in the Asian American Studies Department, UCLA, is a tenured lecturer in the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature Studies, Ho Chi Minh City University of Education. Her main research interests are comparative literature, film adaptation, gender studies, and semiotics. She is at the forefront of initiatives to cultivate Gender Studies in Vietnam, and to that end has worked with the Vietnam’s Women Publishing House to build the “Women’s Book: Gender and Development” series. This series critically addresses women’s history and gender inequities, advancing a feminist agenda amidst Vietnam’s current socioeconomic development. She is also a translator, co-translator, and editor of many classical book translations in philosophy, gender, and cultural studies. She translated Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt (Knowledge Publishing House, 2020); History of Philosophy, Volume 2 by Johannes Hirschberger (co-translation, Knowledge Publishing House, 2020); Antigone’s Claim by Judith Butler (Vietnam Women’s Publishing House, 2021); A History of the Breast by Marilyn Yalom (Vietnam Women’s Publishing House, 2022); and Key Concepts in Gender Studies by Jane Pilcher and Imelda Whelehan (Vietnam Women’s Publishing House, 2022). She has also edited and annotated Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler (Vietnam Women’s Publishing House, 2022). She won the Best Translated Book Award in Vietnam in 2022 for Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt. Regarding community services, she is the co-founder of The Ladder, a community learning space where academic knowledge is shared and made more accessible for everyone, especially the youth in Vietnam.