Creator
Cathy J. Schlund-Vials
Asian American studies scholar who analysed Cambodian American memory work in film, literature, rap and performance.
Cathy J. Schlund-Vials is a professor of English and Asian American studies and the author of War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work (2012).[1][2] The book is about how Cambodian Americans remember the Khmer Rouge years through film, literature, rap music and performance. As of 2026 she is the Iris Howard Regents Professor of English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin.[2][3]
Career
Schlund-Vials is of mixed Cambodian and white heritage.[4] From 2010 she directed the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, where she held a joint appointment as a professor in the Department of English and the institute.[5][4] As director she oversaw the fast growth of the Asian American Studies program.[6] She is also affiliated with the Center for Asian American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.[7] She has served as president of the Association for Asian American Studies, which a 2018 UConn article names the National Association for Asian American Studies.[8][9] With Linda Trinh Vo and K. Scott Wong, she edits the Asian American History and Culture series at Temple University Press.[8]
She has said she tries to make the experiences of Asian Americans relevant to people who are not Asian American, and to make citizenship, migration and oppression understandable to a wide public.[5][6] She has traveled around the United States to give talks, and Cambodian American community members have come to hear her.[6] On March 26, 2026, she held a conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen after his Sissy Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Austin and led the audience questions.[3]
Cambodian American memory work
War, Genocide, and Justice was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2012. It centers on the memory work of the 1.5 generation, the Cambodian Americans who came to the United States as children.[2][6] "Memory work" is how people remember or forget times of suffering, oppression and genocide. To write the book she spoke with artists whose parents lived through the Killing Fields era.[6] She has said that no one had written a book like it about Cambodian Americans before.[6]
The first chapter, "Atrocity Tourism," is about Tuol Sleng Prison and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields.[2] Later chapters take up Loung Ung's memoir First They Killed My Father and Chanrithy Him's When Broken Glass Floats, and treat memoir as a way of confronting U.S. policy, international indifference and the slow pace of justice.[2] One chapter follows the hip-hop artist Prach Ly, known as praCh, who grew up in Cambodia Town in Long Beach, California. It covers his albums, his lyrics and his use of traditional Cambodian instruments.[2] She calls his 1999 album Dalama: The End'n Is Just the Beginnin' a Cambodian American form of expression joining Khmer and hard rap beats.[6] The epilogue turns to poet and artist Anida Yoeu Ali's piece "Visiting Loss" and her installation "Palimpsest for Generation 1.5."[2]
In March 2013 she spoke on this work at UCLA and at the University of Southern California. She argued that Cambodian American artists create other sites of remembrance and reclaim Khmer Rouge history, and in doing so reach a measure of justice for Cambodians and the diaspora.[10][11] She said these artists rewrite the Cambodian story so that trauma does not define it alone.[10]
Other books
Her first book, Modeling Citizenship: Jewish and Asian American Writing, was published by Temple University Press in 2011.[8] She edited Flashpoints for Asian American Studies (2017).[1] With Sean Frederick Forbes and Tara Betts she co-edited The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives about Being Mixed Race in the Twenty-First Century (2Leaf Press, 2017), and she designed its cover.[1][4] She co-edited Asian America: A Primary Source Reader (2017) with K. Scott Wong and Jason O. Chang, Disability, Human Rights and the Limits of Humanitarianism (2014), and, with Martha J. Cutter, Redrawing the Historical Past: History, Memory, and Multi-Ethnic Graphic Narrative (2018).[4][8][1]
Recognition
In 2013 the Association for Asian American Studies gave her its annual Early Career Award, presented at its meeting in Seattle.[6]
Works
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 University of Connecticut, Research on Resilient Cities, Racism, and Equity, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Beyond Genocide, Book review: War, Genocide and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work (June 5, 2014)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 University of Texas at Austin, Frances Tarlton "Sissy" Farenthold Endowed Lecture in Peace
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 2Leaf Press, The Beiging of America book information sheet
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 UConn Today, Coveted Class: Asian American Literature (March 8, 2018)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 UConn Today, Asian American Studies Professor Earns National Honor (April 24, 2013)
- ↑ University of Texas at Austin, Center for Asian American Studies, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 2Leaf Press, Submission call for The Beiging of America (June 15, 2016)
- ↑ UConn Today, Coveted Class: Asian American Literature (2018)
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Cambodian Americans re-member the genocide of the Khmer Rouge (March 8, 2013)
- ↑ USC Center for Transpacific Studies, Re-Membering the Khmer Rouge: Cambodian American Memory Work (2013)