Critical Classicality: Book Talk and Poetry Reading with Dr. Kelly Nguyen (UCLA)
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Speaker(s): Professor Kelly Nguyen (UCLA Classics)
Location: Holsti-Anderson Room, Rubenstein Library 153
In this talk, Kelly Nguyen shares the story behind her book, "Critical Classicality in Vietnam and the Diaspora" (Oxford University Press, 2026), and the poetry that emerged alongside it. The book traces how Vietnamese writers and thinkers have engaged with Greco-Roman antiquity, developing the concept of critical classicality: a way of confronting the classical tradition's complicity in colonialism and empire while also asking how those historically marginalized by that tradition might reclaim and remake it for their own liberatory purposes.
But what happens when the histories we study refuse to stay on the page? Nguyen turns from scholarship to poetry, sharing select poems that were written alongside the book as a way of metabolizing the violence, silences, and trauma of the archives. Reimagining the Homeric Odyssey through the experiences of Vietnamese refugees, including her own and those of her parents, these poems put critical classicality into practice.
The event concludes with a conversation with graduate students in Comparative Literature and Classics.
Reception to follow in Allen 103A.
Location: Holsti-Anderson Room, Rubenstein Library 153
In this talk, Kelly Nguyen shares the story behind her book, "Critical Classicality in Vietnam and the Diaspora" (Oxford University Press, 2026), and the poetry that emerged alongside it. The book traces how Vietnamese writers and thinkers have engaged with Greco-Roman antiquity, developing the concept of critical classicality: a way of confronting the classical tradition's complicity in colonialism and empire while also asking how those historically marginalized by that tradition might reclaim and remake it for their own liberatory purposes.
But what happens when the histories we study refuse to stay on the page? Nguyen turns from scholarship to poetry, sharing select poems that were written alongside the book as a way of metabolizing the violence, silences, and trauma of the archives. Reimagining the Homeric Odyssey through the experiences of Vietnamese refugees, including her own and those of her parents, these poems put critical classicality into practice.
The event concludes with a conversation with graduate students in Comparative Literature and Classics.
Reception to follow in Allen 103A.
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Where is it happening?
David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 411 Chapel Drive, Box 90185, Duke University, Durham, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
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Host or PublisherDuke Department of Classical Studies
