Anh Sy Huy Le 
Assistant Professor of History
Ettinger 300H
484-664-3325
I am a social and political historian specializing in Chinese migration across maritime East and Southeast Asia. I have spent the formative years of my career researching the complex and oft-contentious relationships between European colonial powers—particularly the French empire in Vietnam—and the influential Chinese diaspora in southern Vietnam (formerly French Cochinchina). I am completing a book manuscript that examines key domains of Chinese diasporic social and economic interactions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Vietnam. In it, I argue that the evolution of Chinese migrants’ networks and Sino-French entanglements had a profound impact on colonial politics that rippled across Southeast Asian port cities, thus playing a crucial role in the making of the French empire in this region. My research, which has been published in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, draws on extensive archival work conducted between 2016 and 2021 in China, Singapore, Vietnam, and France.
My focus on mobility and migratory networks has not only shaped my archival research but also deeply informed my approach to teaching transnational and comparative history. I design and teach courses that cross borders and challenge the essentialist categories often associated with nation-centric histories and identities. At Muhlenberg, I teach courses on China (both traditional and modern), the Vietnam War, Asian American history, modern East Asia, as well as thematic courses on Chinese gender and women's history, comparative empires, the history of capitalism in Asia, and global migration. All my courses are interdisciplinary in nature, contributing to the Asian Studies, International Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and Sustainability Studies programs.
I run, hike, and collect records as hobbies. I picked up rockclimbing (bouldering to be specific) a few years back and have tried to go occasionally. Hailing from Vietnam, I consider myself a coffee enthusiast, having studied various type of beans and experimented with brewing methods. I take immense joy in talking to students about language learning, travel experiences, historical issues, and global affairs.
Publications
Entangled Histories: Chinese Migration, Inter-Asian Connections, and Empire Building in French Colonial Vietnam. Manuscript in Preparation.
“From Subjects to Subversives: Chinese Migrants and the Evolution of the French Colonial Surveillance Regime in Saigon-Cholon, 1874-1930” Asian Ethnicity, Special Issue: Co-Producing Ethnicity in Urban Asia, Vol. 24, Issue 4, (June 16, 2023), 544-570.
“Mortal Remains as Biohazard: Chinese Repatriation, Plague Epidemiology, and Biopolitical Governance in Sài Gòn–Chợ Lớn, 1890–1898.” Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Special Issue: Biopolitical Vietnam, Vol. 18, no. 1–2 (May 1, 2023): 15–60.
“The Studies of Chinese Diasporas in Colonial Southeast Asia: Theories, Concepts, and Histories.” China and Asia: A Journal in Historical Studies, No. 2 (December 20, 2019): 225–63.
“The ‘Orientals’ Strike Back: Displacement, Diasporic Resistance, and Spatial Justice in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire,” Journal of Migration History, 4 (2018): Special Issue: Cities and Overseas Migration in the Long Nineteenth Century, 134-160.
“Trade, Colonialism, and Diaspora: Chinese Rice Commerce and the Transformation of Saigon-Cholon in Colonial Vietnam,” in Chapters on Asia: Selected Papers from the Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowships (2020), Singapore: National Library Board, 2021.
Review of Nu-Anh Tran, Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2022, Journal of Asian Studies 1 November 2023; 82 (4): 771-773.
Review of Christina Firpo, The Uprooted: Race, Children, and Imperialism in French Indochina, 1890-1980, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2016, Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, August 2018, 262-264.
Review of Micheline Lessard, Human Trafficking in Colonial Vietnam, New York: Routledge, 2015, Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. 12, Issue 4, 106-110, 2017.
