For decades, the multi-billion dollar health and wellness industry has touted the virtues of clean living. This lecture asks: What do we mean by clean? How did those ideas shift in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the U.S. military’s widespread use of chemical weapons? What lessons about living clean can we gather from those who have survived mass contamination?
Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu is Professor of American Studies in the Department of Social and Analysis at NYU. She is the author or editor of five books, most recently, Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (Duke UP, 2021), which was honored with multiple awards, including the R. R. Hawkins Award and a Victor Turner Prize. She was the former faculty director of the NYU Prison Education Program's Research Lab and recently the co-leader of the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on "Transpacific Thought and the Problem of Asia."
Jasmine Zou
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