Jacinda Tran (she/her/s) is an interdisciplinary scholar of visual culture, space, and empire. Her research, writing, and teaching examine the legacies of U.S. militarism across racial and gendered landscapes.
Jacinda’s current book project, Search and Destroy: U.S. Militarism, Media, and the Making of Race, examines how U.S. approaches to sight and perception during the so-called Vietnam War inaugurated a foundational episteme for producing, imagining, and consuming race and its attendant violences today. The book charts an expanse of visualizing technologies developed during U.S. intervention in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and beyond to demonstrate how the imperatives of “search and destroy” persisted in the postwar construction and reception of Southeast Asia and Southeast Asians in the U.S. The project considers technologies of visualization—such as aerial surveillance, chemical defoliation, and photojournalism, among others—alongside wartime violence, militarized rescue, national securitization efforts, and refugee resettlement throughout the latter half of the 20th century.
Jacinda Tran holds a PhD in American Studies from Yale University, with a graduate certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her work has been supported by the American Association of University Women, the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Social Science Research Council.