Michael G. Vann (born June 19, 1967) is an American historian who serves as Professor of History at California State University, Sacramento. He teaches a range of world history courses, including 20th century world, Southeast Asia, imperialism, and genocide. His research specializes in the history of the French colonial empire, epidemic diseases such as the Third Bubonic Plague Pandemic, and Cold War era mass violence in Southeast Asia. Vann holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was a student of Tyler Stovall and Edmund Burke III. His dissertation was on the history of white supremacy in French colonial Hanoi. He is a graduate of 'Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawai'i, his home town.
Vann has won three Fulbright awards, one for doctoral research in France, 1994–1995, and a Senior Scholar award to Indonesia, 2012–2013, and a third as a Senior Scholar in Cambodia, 2018–2019, where he taught history and did research on representations of Cold War era mass violence in Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Indonesian museums. In Indonesia he was a visiting scholar for the History and American Studies departments at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Java.
He was president of the French Colonial Historical Society (FCHS) from 2008 to 2010.[1] He is a member of a post-1999 wave of historians who adopted a new critical approach to this history of France and its colonial empire.
Vann has published three books: The Colonial Good Life: André Joyeux's Vision of French Indochina,[2] 20th Century Voices: Selected Readings in World History,[3] and The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam.[4] [5] Vann was featured on public radio's Freakonomics, speaking about how his research on rat hunting in colonial Hanoi related to the economic concept "perverse incentive".[6] He was interviewed about French colonialism on KUSP's 7th Avenue Project.[7]
He has also published articles on Indonesian history and politics, including the Cebongan Prison raid, 2013,[8] and Lawang Sewu, a Dutch era haunted house in Semarang.[9]
The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Race, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Graphic History Series). Oxford University Press, New York, 2018. (Co-authored with Liz Clarke)
Instructor's Manual, Ways of the World: A Brief Global History with Sources. 3rd Edition. Bedford/St.Martin's, 2016. (Author)
The Norton Mix: Readings in World and Regional History. W.W. Norton, New York, 2016. (Co-Author and Co-Editor)
Twentieth Century Voices: Selected Readings in World History. Cognella, San Diego, 2012. (Author and Editor)
"The Colonial Good Life:" A Commentary on Andre Joyeux's Vision of French Indochina. White Lotus Press, Bangkok, 2008. (Author and Translator)
"Cambodia's Other Lost City: French Colonial Phnom Penh". Writer and Host. 2014. Jeffrey Dym, director. YouTube
"WHAB Focus Issue and Teaching Forum. Making French Connections: France in World History." Guest Editor with Alyssa Sepinwall. World History Association Bulletin Vol. XXVI, No. 1, 2010.
"A People's History of Surfing" co-authored with Trey Highton. Jacobin, 2022. Jacobin
"Suharto's Old Guard Is Still Calling the Shots in Indonesia". Jacobin, 2022. Jacobin
"Suharto's US-Backed Coup in Indonesia Supplied a Template for Worldwide Mass Murder". Jacobin, 2022. Jacobin
"Tyler Stovall Was a Groundbreaking Historian of Modern France". Jacobin, 2021. Jacobin
"Indonesia Still Hasn't Escaped Suharto's Genocidal Legacy". Jacobin, 2021. Jacobin
"French Urbanism, Vietnamese Resistance, and the Plague in Hanoi, Vietnam, 1885-1930s", Edidted by Mohammad Gharipour and Caitlin DeClercq, Epidemic Urbanism: How Contagious Diseases Have Shaped Global Cities. Intellect Books, 2021.
"The True Story of Indonesia's US-Backed Anti-Communist Bloodbath". Jacobin, 2021. Jacobin
"Teaching Pandemic History During a Pandemic Present". Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, special issue "Pandemic Pedagogy: Reflections on teaching in times of global disruption", 2021. Kyoto Review
"Alexandre Yersin: Plague Conqueror and White Colonizer". Fiction and Film for French Scholars, Volume 11, Issue 1, October 2020. Fiction and Film for Scholars of France
"Colonial Sewers Led to More Rats". Feral Atlas, Stanford University Press Digital, 2020. Feral Atlas
"Microsyllabus: Histories of Epidemic Disease". The Abusable Past, 2020. The Abusable Past
"'And not just the men, but the women and the children, too': Gendered Images of Violence in Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian Cold War Museums." Suvannabhumi: Multi-disciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Volume 12, Number 1, 2020.
"Tropical Cold War Horror: Penumpasan Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI and the Traumatized Culture of Suharto's New Order." Poshek Fu and Man-Fung Yip, The Cold War and Asian Cinemas (Routledge), 2020.
"Murder, Museums, and Memory: Cold War Public History in Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, and Phnom Penh." Frank Jacob (ed.), Genocide and Mass Violence in Asia: An Introductory Reader (De Gruyter), 2019.
"Confessions of a Rogue Historian: Why I Wrote a Graphic History of Colonial Hanoi." Fiction and Film for French Scholars, Volume 9, Issue 3, March 2019. Fiction and Film for Scholars of France
"Book raids, Red-baiting and culture wars in the Indonesian presidential election." The Asia Dialogue, February 21, 2019. The Asia Dialogue
"Will French History Finally Engage Intersectionality?" in "Race, Racism, and the Study of France and the Francophone World Today." H-France Salon, Volume 11, Issue 2, 2019. H-France
"Suharto's Shadow Still Lingers in Indonesian Museums." The Diplomat, February 6, 2019. The Diplomat
"Emotion and ambiguity in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum," The Asia Dialogue, January 8, 2019. The Asia Dialogue
"Jakarta, 1968: The Party's Over." World History Bulletin special issue on "The Long Global Sixties," Vol. XXXIV, Nos. 1–2, 2018.
"(Colonial) Intimacy Issues: Using French Hanoi to Teach the Histories of Sex, Racial Hierarchies, and Geographies of Desire in the New Imperialism." World History Connected, October 2018. World History Connected
"American Historical Presidential Biography: Tyler Stovall." American Historical Association Presidential Address Booklet, 2018. American Historical Association
"Sex and the Colonial City: Mapping Masculinity, Whiteness, and Desire in French Occupied Hanoi." Journal of World History, Vol. 28, Nos. 3 & 4, 2017.
"'Blame it on the Casbah:' The White Male Imperialist Fantasies of Duvivier's Pépé le Moko." Fiction and Film for French Historians: A Cultural Bulletin, Vol. 8, Issue 1, 2017. Fiction and Film for Scholars of France
"Société colonial et accomodations: entre réalités et representations" co-authored with Jean-François Klein and Micheline Lessard in Dominique Barjot and Jean-François Klein. De l'Indochine colonial au Việt Nam actuel (Magellan & Cie.), 2017.
"Call Five-O a White Male Imperialist Fantasy: Steve McGarrett as a Vision of American Cold War Masculinity, Race, and Empire" in Lori McGuire (ed.), Entertainment Television and the Cold War, (Cambridge Scholars), 2016.
"Paris–Dakar in Reverse: Colonial and Post-Colonial Urban Histories, Roundtable Reflection on the Past and Future of French Urban History." Co-authored by Ellen Wurtzel, Jeff Horn, Catherine Clark, and Michael G. Vann, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 2016.
"Comparative History of Genocide in Southeast Asia: Using Cambodia and East Timor in Asian Civilizations and World History Survey Courses." Education About Asia, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2015.
"When the World Came to Southeast Asia: Malacca and the Global Economy." Education About Asia, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2014.
"Haunted house, haunted history: Visitors to Semarang's Lawang Sewu find competing narratives of history, memory and popular culture." Inside Indonesia, July 1, 2013. Inside Indonesia "Shadow Puppets and Special Forces: Indonesia's Fragile Democracy." The Diplomat, June 14, 2013. The Diplomat
"Hanoi in the Time of Cholera: Epidemic Disease and Racial Power in the Colonial City" in Laurence Monnais and Harold J. Cook (eds.), Global Movements, Local Concerns: Medicine and Health in Southeast Asia (National University Singapore Press), 2012.
"The Dark Side: French Men Becoming Monsters in Algeria." French and Film forFrench Historians: A Cultural Bulletin, Vol. 3, Issue 1, 2012. Fiction and Film for Scholars of France
"Fear and Loathing in French Hanoi: Colonial White Images and Imaginings of 'Native' Violence" in Martin Thomas (ed.) The French Colonial Mind: Violence, Military Encounters, and Colonialism (University of Nebraska Press), 2011.
"Teaching Colonialism in World History: The Case of French Indochina." World History Bulletin, Vol. XXVI, No. 1, 2010.
"Of Pirates, Postcards, and Public Beheadings: The Pedagogical Execution in French Colonial Indochina" in a special issue of Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques dedicated to colonial violence in the French empire, 2010.
"Placing East Timor on the Syllabus: Pedagogical Strategies for Teaching East Timor in University Level World History Survey Courses" in Michael Leach, Nuno Canas Mendes, Antero B. da Silva, Alarico da Costa Ximenes and Bob Boughto (eds.), Hatene kona ba/ Compreender/ Understanding/ Mengerti Timor-Leste (Swinburne Press), 2010.
"Caricaturing 'the colonial good life' in French Indochina." European Comic Art, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2009.
"Building Whiteness on the Red River: Race, Power, and Urbanism in Paul Doumer's Hanoi, 1897-1902" in a special issue of Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques dedicated to French colonial urbanism, 2007.
"White Blood on Rue Hue: The Murder of 'le négrier' Bazin." The Proceedings of the Western Society for French History Vol. 34, 2006.
"Of le Cafard and Other Tropical Diseases: Perceived Threats to White Colonial Culture in Indochina" in Jennifer Yee (ed.), France and 'Indochina:' Cultural Representations (Lexington), 2005.
"'All the World's a Stage', Especially in the Colonies: The Hanoi Exposition of 1902" in Martin Evans & Amanda Sackur (ed.), Empire and Culture: The French Experience, 1830-1940 (Macmillan/Palgrave Press), 2004.
"The Third Republic and Colonialism, 1870-1918." 2004.
"The Colonial Exhibition of May, 1931." 2004.
"Of Rats, Rice, and Race: The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre, an Episode in French Colonial History." French Colonial History, 2003.
"The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly: Variation and Difference in French Racial Thinking in Colonial Vietnam" in Tyler Stovall & Sue Peabody (ed.), The Color of Liberty: The History of Race in France (Duke University Press), 2003.
"The Colonial Casbah on the Silver Screen: Using Pépé le Moko and The Battle of Algiers to Teach Colonialism, Race, and Globalization in French History." Radical History Review, April 2002.
"The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly: Variation and Difference in French Racial Thinking in Colonial Indochine." Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 1998. Winner of the Gargan Prize.
"Contesting Culture and Defying Dependency: Migration, Nationalism, and Identity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Hawaii." Stanford Humanities Review, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1997.
Vann has been a host for New Books in History, a channel on the New Books Network, since 2019. His guests have ranged from Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient Viet Thanh Nguyen to dirtbag left podcaster Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House.
| Title | Author(s)/Guest(s) | Air Date | Link to Episode | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857 | October 7, 2019 | New Books Network | ||
| Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897-1975 | Michitake Aso | October 11, 2019 | New Books Network | |
| Footprints of War: Militarized Landscapes in Vietnam | David Biggs | October 31, 2019 | New Books Network | |
| Beyond the Asylum: Mental Illness in French Colonial Vietnam | Claire Edington | November 13, 2019 | New Books Network | |
| Vietnam's American War: A History | Pierre Asselin | November 18, 2019 | New Books Network | |
| Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre | Kim A. Wagner | January 15, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| My Lai: Vietnam, 1968, and the Descent into Darkness | Howard Jones | February 7, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War | May 28, 2020 | New Books Network | ||
| Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World | June 15, 2020 | New Books Network | ||
| Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing | Scott Laderman | June 19, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| Buried Histories: The Anticommunist Massacres of 1965-1966 in Indonesia | John Roosa | June 24, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World | July 1, 2020 | New Books Network | ||
| Reconsidering Interpretation of Heritage Sites: America in the Eighteenth Century | Anne Lindsay | August 4, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| World History through Case Studies: Historical Skills in Practice | David Eaton | August 24, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| Subversive Seas: Anticolonial Networks across the Twentieth-Century Dutch Empire | Kris Alexanderson | September 14, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| Witness to the Age of Revolution: The Odyssey of Juan Bautista Tupac Amaru | October 12 | New Books Network | ||
| The 'Silent Majority' Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right | Scott Laderman | October 22, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| The Murder of Emmett Till: A Graphic History | Karlos K. Hill | October 27, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| Cocaine and Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing's Greatest Love Affair | Chas Smith | November 6, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| In the Dragon's Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century | Sebastian Strangio | November 23, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| Asian Place, Filipino Nation: A Global History of the Philippine Revolution, 1887-1912 | Nicole CuUnjieng Aboitiz | December 9, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers, and the Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade | Peter Maguire and Mike Ritter | December 23, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason | Matt Christman, et al. | December 24, 2020 | New Books Network | |
| Albert Camus: A Very Short Introduction | Oliver Gloag | January 13, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene | January 22, 2021 | New Books Network | ||
| Coup, King, Crisis: A Critical Interregnum in Thailand | January 27, 2021 | New Books Network | ||
| You Don't Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War | March 10, 2021 | New Books Network | ||
| Epidemics and the Modern World | Michell L. Hammond | March 27, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Sulfuric Utopias: A History of Maritime Fumigation | Lukas Engelmann and Christos Lynteris | March 26, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana | Brian K. Mitchell, Barrington S. Edwards, and Nick Weldon | April 12, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Lenin Lives!: Reimagining the Russian Revolution 1917-2017 | Philip Cunliffe | April 22, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| The Committed | Viet Thanh Nguyen | April 29, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Political Violence in Southeast Asia Since 1945: Case Studies from Six Countries | Eve Monique Zucker and Ben Kiernan | June 29, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia | July 13, 2021 | New Books Network | ||
| Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games | Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall | July 22, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Making Waves | August 11, 2021 | New Books Network | ||
| Militarizing Marriage: West African Soldiers' Conjugal Traditions in Modern French Empire | Sarah J. Zimmerman | August 20, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| The End of the End of History: Politics in the Twenty-First Century | Alex Hochuli, George Hoare, and Philip Cunliffe | September 3, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion | Working Class History Collective | October 8, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Imperial Nostalgia: How the British Conquered Themselves | Peter Mitchell | October 14, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| The Cinema of Rithy Panh: Everything Has a Soul | Leslie Barnes and Joseph Mai | October 15, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, A Graphic Novel | November 10, 2021 | New Books Network | ||
| On Tyranny Graphic Edition: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century | November 16, 2021 | New Books Network | ||
| Hinge Points; A Podcast about Historical Contingency | Matt Christman and Daniel Bessner | November 23, 2021 | New Books Network | |
| Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash | Michael Stewart Foley | February 2, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| One Man's Terrorist: The Political History of the IRA | Daniel Finn | February 10, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| Breathe: A Life in Flow | Rickson Gracie and Peter Maguire | March 24, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| World War II in Southeast Asia: Economy and Society under Japanese Occupation | Gregg Huff | April 15, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| Vaccine: The Human Story; A Chat with Historian and Podcaster Anne Kelly | Anne Kelly | July 8, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870-1920 | Karen Offen | July 14, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| The Memory of Colonialism in Britain and France: The Sins of Silence | Itay Lotem | August 5, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| Feminism's Empire | Carolyn L. Eichner | August 10, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation | Paris Marx | August 16, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| Armed Citizens: The Road from Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment | Noah Shusterman | September 30, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| Ghost Stories for the End of the World; A History Podcast about Conspiracies | Matt | October 10, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| Escaping Slavery: A Documentary History of Native American Runaways in British North America | Antonio T. Bly | November 21, 2022 | New Books Network | |
| "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas's Star Wars" | December 10, 2022 | New Books Network | ||
| Postcolonialism and Migration in French Comics | Mark McKinney | December 24, 2022 | New Books Network |
Vann has also been interviewed on many programs regarding his work.
| Title | Program | Date | Link to Interview | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "His Academic Excellency Paul Kagame at Sacramento State University?" | KPFA Weekend News | 2011 | ||
| "Episode 9: Perverse Incentives" | 2012 | |||
| "Our Man in Hanoi: Historian Mike Vann" | 2012 | 7th Avenue Project | ||
| "The Cobra Effect" | 2012 | Freakonomics | ||
| "Traveling to Vietnam: What Changed?" | Chopsticks Alley | 2017 | Chopsticks Alley | |
| "The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902 Did Not Go as Planned" | 2017 | Atlas Obscura | ||
| "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt – Bringing SEAsian History to Life" | ThinkTech Hawaii | 2017 | ThinkTech Hawaii | |
| "French Rats in Hanoi: The Effects of French Colonial Rule in Vietnam" | Chopsticks Alley | 2017 | Chopsticks Alley | |
| "Paranoia di Balik Pembatasan Akses WNA ke Museum TNI" ("The Paranoia Behind Restricting Foreigners' Access to the TNI Museum") | Tirto.ID | 2018 | Tirto.ID | |
| "Gendering Narratives of Cold War Violence in Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian Museums with Michael Vann" | 2018 | SoundCloud | ||
| "Interview with Michael G. Vann, Professor of History, Sacramento State University, author of the new graphic history, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam" | World History Connected | 2018 | World History Connected | |
| "Episode 42: The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt" | On Top of the World | 2018 | On Top of the World | |
| "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt with Michael G. Vann" | 2018 | SoundCloud | ||
| "Author Michael Vann on Hanoi's Infamous Colonial Rat Hunt" | Urbanist Hanoi | 2019 | Saigoneer | |
| "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt" | New Books in French Studies | 2019 | New Books Network | |
| "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: The mass murder of rats that rocked colonial Hanoi" | Chào Hanoi | 2020 | Chào Hanoi | |
| "What a Failed Rat Hunt Says about Colonialism" | 2020 | BYU Radio | ||
| "The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: A Conversation with Michael G. Vann" | Made in China Journal | 2020 | Made in China Journal | |
| "Rats: the planet's most tenacious survivors with a lot to teach humanity" | 2020 | CBC | ||
| "Great Hanoi Rat Hunt with Michael Vann" | Infectious Historians | 2020 | Infectious Historians |
Hailing from O'ahu, Hawai'i, Vann is an accomplished surfer who frequently travels to Indonesia. He holds a 4th degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He has taught Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Santa Cruz, California for Claudio França BJJ, Kaijin MMA, and Garth Taylor Jiu-Jitsu. He also taught Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at Hanoi BJJ in Vietnam and Kingdom Fight Gym in Siem Reap, Cambodia.