Advanced Praise
Interviews
“Q&A with Cindy Nguyen, author of “Bibliotactics” January 7, 2026, UC Press Blog
“Cindy Anh Nguyen: New Book Uncovers the History of Vietnamese Public Libraries” December 4, 2025, UCLA School of Education & Information Studies News
Public Talks – Videos
“Colonial Libraries and Anticolonial Resistance” Roundtable, Temi Odumosu, Cindy Anh Nguyen, Karen E. Fisher, Renee Lynch
Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums, and Archives, University of Washington Information School, December 3, 2025
“Libraries have long stood at the crossroads of knowledge and power. In anticipation of Cindy Anh Nguyen’s forthcoming book Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam (2026), this panel explores how libraries have functioned both as instruments of colonization—collecting, classifying, and controlling knowledge to reinforce imperial and neocolonial hierarchies—and as sites of anticolonial resistance and reclamation. Drawing on examples from different global contexts, panelists will examine how communities, scholars, and activists are confronting colonial legacies and taking active roles in decolonizing knowledge practices. Through these efforts, they aim to situate libraries as bridges between communities, information, and technology—not as institutions beholden to global power dynamics. By tracing the tensions between inherited structures and new modes of cultural engagement, the panel reimagines the library’s potential for both seeding and stewarding social change.“
“Bibliotactics: Libraries and the Colonial Public in Vietnam”
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Vietnam August 14, 2025
“Women’s Reading: Theory and Practice” Roundtable with Cindy Anh Nguyễn, Yến Vũ và Nguyễn Thị Minh
Nguyễn Art Foundation, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam August 9, 2025
Between Public and Power: A Colonial History of the National Library of Cambodia
Center for Khmer Studies, February 10, 2023
What is the history of the National Library of Cambodia? What cultural and political roles did this institution have during the French colonial period and in postcolonial Cambodia? This talk shares archival research findings on the National Library of Cambodia during the French colonial period. Dr. Nguyen unearths the social life of the library and the significance of the colonial library institution as a symbol and technology of textual authority. Dr. Nguyen analyzes how the colonial library architecture, organization, and operations contributed to defining an abstract Western notion of ‘public’ and ‘textual authority’ that perpetuated colonial hierarchies of privileged knowledge access. This project contributes new findings to understanding Cambodian histories of print culture, colonial society, and urbanism. As a scholar of libraries and Southeast Asia, Dr. Nguyen provides a theoretical and methodological framework called ‘bibliotactics’ to critically examine institutions of knowledge in colonial contexts.