Shawn F. McHale

Born in Southeast Asia, Professor McHale received his B.A. with honors from Swarthmore College, an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaii, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Southeast Asian history from Cornell University (1995). He has taught courses on East and Southeast Asian history, Vietnam, history and memory, and colonialism and its legacy. His current research interests include decolonization, the First Indochina War, and ethnic conflict.

Professor McHale's publications include Print and Power: Confucianism, Communism, and Buddhism in the Making of Modern Vietnam (University of Hawaii Press, 2004); "Vietnamese Marxism, Dissent, and the Politics of Postcolonial Memory: Tran Duc Thao, 1946-1993," Journal of Asian Studies (February 2002) and "Understanding the Fanatic Mind? The Viet Minh and Race Hatred in the First Indochina War (1945-1954)," Journal of Vietnamese Studies (October 2009). He spent the 2007-08 academic year in Vietnam on a Fulbright-Hays faculty fellowship.