Thy Phu

Biography

Thy Phu is an Associate Professor at Western University. After completing her PhD at UC Berkeley, and Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto, Dr. Phu joined the Department where she teaches courses on cultural studies, critical theory, and American studies. Her research explores the intersections between visual studies, critical race studies, transnational American studies, and transpacific critique, and is funded by numerous awards including SSHRC Insight, Connection, and Partnership Development Grants. She is the author of two books; the first, Picturing Model Citizens: Civility in Asian American Visual Culture is published by Temple University Press; and the second, Feeling Photography, is a collection of essays co-edited with Elspeth Brown published by Duke University Press. She is presently working on a monograph titled Warring Visions, which provides a new visual history of the war in Vietnam by focusing on the works of Vietnamese photographers. Her related project, Cold War Camera, is a collection of essays co-edited with Andrea Noble. She is also the PI for the SSHRC-funded collaborative project, The Family Camera Network, which collects and preserves family photos and stories about them (familycameranetwork.org). Her most recent collaboration, with Vinh Nguyen, is States of Refuge: Humanitarian Exceptionalism and Critical Refugee Studies in Canada. She has also served as Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Visiting Bicentennial Associate Professor of Canadian Studies at the MacMillan Centre at Yale University and is presently a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists at the Royal Society of Canada.

Research Interest

Visual culture, particularly photography's intersections with literature, theory, and the representations of race