Faculty

Quan Manh Ha

Professor

Contact

Office
LA 213
Phone
(406) 243-5231
Email
quan.ha@umontana.edu
Office Hours

SPRING 2024 

TUES & THURS: 8:45-9:30 and 11:30-12:30

Website
http://hs.umt.edu/english/people/default.php?s=Ha

Personal Summary

I joined the English faculty in the Fall of 2011. My research interests include post-1900 American literature, multiethnic US literature, Vietnam War literature, critical race theory, and literary translation. Literary translation is a political and an ethical act. Therefore, besides publishing scholarly journal articles and essays, I am committed to translating Vietnamese literature to fight against Vietnamese invisibility in master American narratives about the Vietnam War and to promote cross-cultural understanding in the comparative humanities.

 

Education

Ph.D. in American Literature, Texas Tech University, 2011

M.A. in English, Middle Tennessee State University, 2006

Post-M.Ed. Curricular Training, Troy University (main campus), 2003-2004

M.Ed. in English, Troy University (main campus), 2003

B.A. in English, University of Đà Lạt, Vietnam, 2000

Courses Taught

LIT 596: Graduate Independent Study

 American Literary Criticism since 1930

 Vietnam War Literature

 Asian American Literature

Modern & Contemporary American Drama

Vietnam & the Vietnamese Refugee Subject in Literary Imagination

Multiethnic US Fiction and Non-fiction

LIT 521: US Literature Seminar

Multiethnic US Literatures

Ethnic American Memoirs & Autobiographies

LIT 420: Critical Race Theory

LIT 391: Special Topics

Vietnamese Literature in English Translation, 1930-Present

Vietnam War Literature

LIT 380: Literary Approaches to Drama

American Drama, 1900-present

LIT 369: Short Fiction

American Short Stories since 1945

The American Short Story & Novella

LIT 344: Asian American Literature

LIT 343: African American Literature

The New Negro: Voices of the Harlem Renaissance

The Black Arts Movement & the Second Renaissance (1960-2000)

 African American Fiction & Drama since 1900  

LIT 304/430: US Writers of Color

LIT 301: Studies in Literary Forms

LIT 300: Literary Criticism

LIT 246: Genres, Themes, and Approaches

The North American Short Story

LIT 236: Literary Histories

US Literature since 1945

Modern US Literature

American Realism & Naturalism

LIT 211: American Literature II

LIT 201: Introduction to Literary Studies

LIT 110: Introduction to Literature

 

Publications

Research Areas: Multiethnic US literature, Vietnam War literature, post-1900 American literature, postcolonial literature & theory, literary translation

BOOKS

Ha, Quan Manh, and Paul Christiansen, translators. "Light Out" and Modern Vietnamese Stories, 1930-1954. NIU Southeast Asian Series (an imprint of Cornell University Press), 2024. https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501778032/light-out-and-modern-vietnamese-stories-19301954/#bookTabs=1

Ha, Quan Manh, and Quynh H. Vo, translators. Longings: Contemporary Fiction by Vietnamese Women Writers. Texas Tech University Press, 2024. https://www.ttupress.org/9781682832066/longings/

Ha, Quan Manh, and Charles Waugh, translators. The Termite Queen. By Tạ Duy Anh. Penguin Random House SEA, 2023. https://penguin.sg/book/the-termite-queen/?fbclid=IwAR3xZdwgB1BHfrb-5QoKgoDgfFQfSYNcMSFyRCiOuCycsOaMK22YAUOLDRw

Ha, Quan Manh, and Cab Tran, translators and editors. Hà Nội​ at Midnight: Stories. By Bảo Ninh. Texas Tech University Press, 2023. https://www.ttupress.org/9781682831625/hanoi-at-midnight/

Ha, Quan Manh, translator. Luminous Nights: Pioneering Vietnamese Short Stories. La Frémillerie, France, 2021. 

Ha, Quan Manh, and Joseph Babcock, translators and editors. Other Moons: Vietnamese Stories of the American War and Its Aftermath. Columbia University Press, 2020. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/other-moons/9780231196086

ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS 

“David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face: Fictional Autoethnography and a Parody on Racialization.” Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies, vol. 12, 2023, pp. 29-46. (co-authored with JM Christiansen)

“Ideological Dissension and Conciliation in Three African American Novels of the 1980s.” Amerikastudien / American Studies. vol. 68, no. 1, 2023, pp. 53-73. (co-authored with Boston Sullivan)

“Violent Memory and Generational Conflict in Andrew Lam’s ‘Birds of Paradise Lost’ and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s ‘The Immolation.'" Studies in the American Short Story, vol. 2, no. 2, 2021, pp. 136-156. (co-authored with Lindsey Gallagher)

“‘The truth is memory has not forgotten us’: Memory, Identity, and Storytelling in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.” The Rocky Mountain Review of Languages and Literature, vol. 75, no. 2, 2021, pp. 199-220. (co-authored with Mia Tompkins)

“Purple Hats and Threatened Whiteness in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Everything That Rises Must Converge.’” Short Fiction in Theory & Practice, vol. 10, no. 1, 2020, pp. 9-25 (co-authored with Sierra Gideon)

“An Introduction to ‘Tran Van Dinh’s The Quirks and Whims of Heaven: A Meeting with President John F. Kennedy and the Buddhist Crisis.’” War, Literature & the Arts, vol. 31, 2019, pp. 1-25.

“Postcolonial Satire, Imperialist Nostalgia, and Reconciliation in Huy Duong Phan’s ‘The Billion Dollar Skeleton’ and Andrew Lam’s ‘Slingshot.’” Journal of the Short Story in English, vol. 71, 2018, pp. 271-290. (co-authored with William Frost)

“The Malleability of Truth and Language in Chay Yew’s Porcelain and A Language of Their Own.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, vol. 6, no. 2, 2018, pp. 300-314. (co-authored with Andrew Vigesaa)

“The Violence of Duality in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro.” ANGLICA: An International Journal of English Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, 2018, pp. 121-134. (co-authored with Conor Hogan)

“From ‘Big Red’ Hydrick to Goat Dykeman: Eudora Welty’s Navigation between the Fictional and the Real in ‘Where Is the Voice Coming From?’” Prague Journal of English Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, 2018, pp. 79-96. (co-authored with Ryan Hitchcock).

“‘It’s oil and water’: Race, Gender, Power, and Trauma in Vu Tran’s Dragonfish.” Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies, vol. 8, 2017, pp. 26-42. (co-authored with Chase Greenfield)

“When Memory Speaks: Transnational Remembrances in Vietnam War Literature.” Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 5, no. 3, 2016, pp. 463-489.

“Domestic Violence in Lac Su’s I Love Yous Are for White People: A Sociological Criticism Approach.” Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies, vol. 7, 2016, pp. 88-103.

“Charles Baxter’s ‘Gryphon’: A Postmodernist Substitute in a Traditional Classroom.” Journal of the Short Story in English, vol. 64, 2015, pp. 249-261. (co-authored with Jonathan M. Hoyer)

“Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge: Problematic Representations of Vietnam War History.” Southeast Review of Asian Studies, vol. 36, 2014, pp. 75-90.

“Conspiracy of Silence and New Subjectivity in Monkey Bridge and The Gangster We Are All Looking For.” Journal of Southeast-Asian American Education and Advancement, vol. 8, 2013, pp. 1-16.

“Power and Gender Relations in When Heaven and Earth Changed Places.” War, Literature & the Arts, vol. 25, 2013, pp. 1-18.

“Vietnamese American Survival Literature and Human Rights Discourse.” New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2012, pp. 17-37.

“Thematic Shifts in Contemporary Vietnamese American Novels.” Ethnic Studies Review, vol. 33, no. 2, 2010, pp. 63-81.

Introduction. The Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I: The Queen’s Translation of Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae. Ed. Noel Harold Kaylor and Philip Edward Phillips. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Arizona State University Press, 2009. 1-38.

“Trey Ellis’s Platitudes: Synthesizing Black Voices.” Ethnic Studies Review [a special issue on Ethnicity: Analysis of Cultural, Social & Political Trends], vol. 32, no. 1, 2009, pp. 55-76.

“An Early Voice of the Vietnamese Diaspora in Vietnamese American Literature.” Southeast Review of Asian Studies, vol. 29, 2007, pp. 56-71.

“Milton’s Comus: A Comedy of Menace.” CCTE Studies, vol. 72, 2007, pp. 80-89.

“Utopia and Dystopia Elements in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Themes of Conflict in the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature of the American South. Ed. Ben Robertson, et al. Edwin Mellen, 2007. 27-42.

“A Thematic Approach to Vietnamese American Short Stories Written in English.” Short Story, vol. 13, no. 2, 2005, pp. 83-94.

“The Boethian Cosmos in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews.” Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society, vol. 13, 2004, pp. 75-84.

REFERENCE ESSAYS (published in GALE / Cengage Learning’s Literature Criticism Series)

“Ho Anh Thai’s Behind the Red Mist.Histories of Everyday Life in Totalitarian Regimes. Vol. 3: Literary Approaches. GALE/Cengage Learning, St. James, 2015. 275-78.

“Andrew X. Pham’s Catfish and Mandala.” Histories of Everyday Life in Totalitarian Regimes. Vol. 2: Effects of Totalitarianism. GALE/Cengage Learning, St. James, 2015. 321-324.

“Nguyen Qui Duc’s Where the Ashes Are.Histories of Everyday Life in Totalitarian Regimes. Vol. 1: Personal Experiences. GALE/Cengage Learning, St. James, 2015. 226-229.

“Kien Nguyen’s The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood.” The Literature of Autobiographical Narrative. Vol. 1. GALE/Cengage Learning, St. James Press, 2013. 170-173.

“Elizabeth Kim’s Ten Thousand Sorrows: The Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan.” The Literature of Autobiographical Narrative. Vol. 1. GALE/Cengage Learning, St. James Press, 2013. 102-104.

“Sichan Siv’s Golden Bones: An Extraordinary Journey from Hell in Cambodia to a New Life in America.” The Literature of Autobiographical Narrative. Vol. 1. GALE/Cengage Learning, St. James Press, 2013. 306-308.

“Vu Trong Phung’s Dumb Luck.” The Literature of Propaganda. Vol. 2. GALE/Cengage Learning, St. James Press, 2013. 309-312.

“Tran Van Dinh’s Blue Dragon, White Tiger: A Tet Story.” Literature of War. Vol. 2. GALE/Cengage Learning, St. James Press, 2012. 315-318.

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram.Literature of War. Vol. 2. GALE/Cengage Learning, St. James Press, 2012. 147-149.

INTERVIEWS

"To Search for Understanding: A Conversation with Quan Manh Ha and Joseph Babcock about Other Moons: Vietnamese Short Stories about the American War and Its Aftermath." Conducted by Thomas G. Bowie, Jr. WLA: War, Literature, and the Arts, vol. 33, 2021, pp. 1-28.

“Interview with Sichan Siv” [author of Golden Bone, a Cambodian American autobiography]. Southeast Review of Asian Studies, vol. 31, 2009, pp. 207-218.

SHORT-STORY TRANSLATIONS (from Vietnamese into English) 

“White Pillows,” by Dạ Ngân. In My Ear, Your Voice Still Flickering, vol. 1, 2022, pp. 10-23.

"The Tempest," by Bao Ninh. DELOS: A Journal of Translation and World Literature, vol. 36, no. 2, 2021, pp. 256-75. (co-translated with Cab Tran)

“Birds in Formation,” by Nguyen Ngoc Tu. Words without Border: The Online Magazine for International Literature, 6 Aug. 2020. (co-translated with Joseph Babcock)

“White Clouds Flying,” by Bao Ninh. Mekong Review, vol. 5, no. 4, 2020, p. 24. (co-translated with Joseph Babcock)

“A Missing Person,” by Vuong Tam. Asian Literature and Translation (ALT), vol. 7, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-6. (co-translated with Wayne Karlin)

“The Blood Lily,” by Vuong Tam. Asian Literature and Translation (ALT), vol. 7, no. 1, 2020, pp. 7-12. (co-translated with Joseph Babcock)

“Twinkling Stars,” by Nguyen Thi Am. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation, vol. 27, no. 1, 2019, pp. 145-147.

 “A Crescent Moon in the Woods,” by Nguyen Minh Chau. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation, vol. 25, no. 2, 2017, pp. 218-228.

“Hunger,” by Thach Lam. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation, vol. 25, no. 1, 2017, pp. 157-161.

“An Early Morning,” by Thach Lam. Asian Literature and Translation (ALT), vol. 4, no. 6, 2017, pp. 149-153.

“Moonlit Nights,” by Thach Lam. Asian Literature and Translation (ALT), vol. no. 6, 2017, pp. 153-158.

“Half-dead,” by Nhat Linh. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation, vol. 23. no. 2, 2015, pp. 257-260.

“Two Sisters,” by Nhat Linh. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation, vol. 23, no. 2, 2015, pp. 251-256.

“Carrion Eaters,” by Nguyen Cong Hoan. Asian Literature and Translation (ALT), vol. 3, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1-5.

“A Poor Family,” by To Hoai. Asian Literature and Translation (ALT), vol. 3, no. 1, 2015, pp. 6-10.

“Bright Moon,” by Nam Cao. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation, vol. 23, no. 1, 2015, pp.  204-211.

“The Soil,” by Nam Ha. Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society, vol. 8, no. 2, 2014, pp. 93-101. (co-translated with Chau Tran)

“The Xa-nu Jungle,” by Nguyen Trung Thanh. Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society, vol. 8, no. 2, 2014, pp. 102-109.

“Eyes,” by Nam Cao. Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society, vol. 7, no. 2, 2013, pp. 87-99.

“Overweening Pride,” by Vu Trong Phung. Asian Journal of Literature, Culture and Society, vol. 7, no. 2, 2013, pp. 80-86.

“Wife,” by Nguyen Cong Hoan. CIRQUE: A Literary Journal for Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, vol. 7, 2012, pp. 15-17.

“From Theory to Practice,” by Vu Trong Phung. Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation, vol. 21, no. 2, 2013, pp. 183-187.

“The Teeth of an Upper-Class Family’s Dog,” by Nguyen Cong Hoan. CIRQUE: A Literary Journal for Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, vol. 5, 2011, pp. 24-26. Reprinted in Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation, vol. 21, no. 2, 2013, pp. 188-191.

“Common-law Wife,” by Kim Lân, and Historical Notes. Southern Humanities Review (SHR), vol. 43, no. 4, 2009, pp. 380-389.

BOOK REVIEWS & REVIEW ESSAYS

Review of Caught Dead, by Andrew Lanh (a.k.a. Ed Ifkovic). Journal of Southeast-Asian  American Education and Advancement, vol. 10, 2015, pp. 1-3.

Review of The Lotus and the Storm, by Lan Cao. War, Literature & the Arts, vol. 27, 2015, pp. 18-22.

Review of Pioneer Girl, by Bich Minh Nguyen. Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies, vol. 6, 2015, pp. 60-63.

Review of Love Like Hate, by Linh Dinh. Journal of Southeast-Asian American Education and Advancement, vol. 8, 2013, pp. 1-5.

Review of Inside Out & Back Again, by Thanhha Lai. Journal of Southeast-Asian American Education and Advancement, vol. 8, 2013, pp. 1-4.

Review of I Love Yous Are for White People, by Lac Su. Journal of Southeast-Asian American Education and Advancement, vol. 8, 2013, pp. 1-5.

Review of The Vietnamese-American 1.5 Generation, ed. Sucheng Chan. Ethnic Studies Review, vol. 31, no. 2, 2008, pp. 201-02.

Review of Strategic Reading: Guiding Students to Lifelong Literacy, 6-12, by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Tanya N. Baker, and Julie Dube. Alabama English and Language Arts, vol. 13, Summer 2001-2002, pp. 61-64.