Faculty, students, and independent researchers are encouraged to apply. Research should be conducted between June 2011 and March 2012. Shortly after visiting the Southeast Asian Archive, the recipient must provide a one-page statement of his or her research findings, which may be edited and used in the UC Irvine Libraries' publications. The award is intended to generally defray expenses for traveling to Irvine and conducting research in the Southeast Asian Archive. Funds will be distributed in two installments, before and after the completion of the research project.
The application deadline is May 2, 2011. Applications will be judged according to the relevance of the proposal to holdings of the Southeast Asian Archive, the proposed outcome of the research, and the qualifications of the applicant. The recipient will be notified during the week of May 16.
This award is in honor of Anne Frank, the librarian who founded the Southeast Asian Archive. A generous gift from an anonymous donor has made this annual award possible.
- Applicant name
- Email address
- Title of project
- Brief description of proposed research (no more than 500 words)
- Collections or items that you anticipate using and how they are relevant to your proposed research (no more than 500 words). Make sure to check out our collections’ strengths.
- Proposed outcome of the research (no more than 500 words)
- Up-to-date resume or CV with current contact information
- Proposed dates for visiting the Southeast Asian Archive
- One letter of reference from someone familiar with your research
More information about traveling to the UC Irvine campus is also available. For more information about the Southeast Asian Archive and the award, please contact Christina Woo, Southeast Asian Archive Librarian, at cjwoo@uci.edu.
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| Quan Tran in the Southeast Asian Archive |
2010-2011 Recipient - Quan Tran
Ms. Quan Tran was the second recipient of the award. Conducting research for her doctoral work in American Studies at Yale, she examined “the different modes of knowledge production in the Vietnamese diaspora.” The Southeast Asian Archive collections provided her with records and recordings of musical performances, archived materials from the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA, based in Little Saigon), and information about Vietnamese communities here and abroad that built memorials to recognize the struggles of refugees’ journeys to freedom. She was also interested in the history of the Southeast Asian Archive itself as a body of collected memory that plays a role in producing knowledge about the Vietnamese diaspora.
Quan brought to her research visit her own history with the SEAA. While an undergraduate at UCI she worked as a SEAA student assistant for Anne Frank, so she knew more about the structure of the archive than most researchers. Returning to UCI after earning a double B.A. in Asian American Studies and Comparative Literature in 2004, she saw that the collection had grown. In addition, during her undergraduate years, the archival collections were being processed, thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Quan delved into several of them to learn about the collecting and preserving of Vietnamese pasts.
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| Ma Vang in the Southeast Asia Archive |
2009-2010 Recipient - Ma Vang
Ms. Ma Vang was the inaugural recipient of the award. A doctoral student in Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, Vang researched Hmong refugee resettlement and current events in California, the Air America airline during the Vietnam War, General Vang Pao, and Laos-U.S. relations. The award paid for travel expenses for her visits to the Archive, photocopy services,and other expenses related to conducting her research.
Vang acknowledged the depth and breadth of the Southeast Asian Archive's unique collections about the displacement of Southeast Asians -- including the Hmong, who left Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand to settle primarily in the UnitedStates. "The UCI Libraries Archive is one of the few with material about Hmong displacement and Hmong in the diaspora," she said, "so I am truly grateful for this support."