Dr Kim Huynh
Asialink Resident 2012
School of Politics and International Relations
College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU

What's So Great About Being Displaced?

"One Refugee Without Hope is too Many" was the UN Refugee Agency’s campaign slogan for World Refugee Day 2011. Without disagreeing with this claim, Kim Huynh will discuss how forced displacement and extreme alienation can have a positive and valuable impact on peoples’ lives and work. He will look at how persecution and being out of place shaped Albert Einstein’s vision of the universe, Primo Levi’s survival in Auschwitz and subsequent writing, Leo Strauss’ esoteric philosophy, Roman Polanski’s films and his own upbringing in Canberra as a child of Vietnamese boatpeople.

Refugees, non-refugees along with lovers of physics, literature, philosophy and film are most welcome.

Kim Huynh teaches courses in refugee politics and political philosophy at the ANU. His biography of his parents, Where the Sea Takes Us, has attracted academic and popular acclaim. Kim co-edited The Culture Wars: Australian and American Politics in the 21st Century and has published articles on political theory, women’s studies and forced migration along with contributing essays to Australian newspapers and the BBC Vietnamese. He currently holds an Asialink writing residency and is working on a collection of short stories about youth, love and faith in contemporary Vietnam.