In her own words, Professor Nguyen-vo describes her current research as an examination of "the negotiations of garment workers in Vietnam and in the diaspora in Southern California in relation to differing governmental practices and codes of consumption. The purpose is to interrogate class in a transnational economy, as well as class as a category of analysis in Cultural Studies. If Vietnamese workers in Vietnam and Vietnamese immigrant workers in the US share a racialized and feminized labor location in global production, could we say that they constitute a transnational class whose members share class significations and perceptions or solidarity? I examine workers' narratives of work relations and objects consumed; body significations through the use of consumers' products of soap, shampoo, cosmetics, clothing, and jewelry; literary representations of garment workers' subjectivities; governmental subject-making practices like mobilization campaigns and government labor union practices."
Courses taught include: "National and Post National Politics," "Topics in Vietnamese Film and Literature: Colonial and Post-Colonial Framing of Nation," "Displacement, Emplacement, and Vietnamese Immigrants," and "Nation and Globalization in SEA."