Memory and Imagination: A Polymathic Inquiry

Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer is a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other honors include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Literary Excellence from the American Library Association, a California Book Award, and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature in Fiction from the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association. A finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the PEN Faulkner Award, and an LA Times Book Prize in the Mystery/Thriller category, The Sympathizer made it to over thirty best of the year lists, including those of the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, Public Books, Kirkus Reviews, The Guardian, Library Journal, Flavorwire, and BuzzFeed, among other venues. The foreign rights have been sold to twenty-eight countries. Its sequel, The Committed, is now available.

Nguyen is University Professor, Aerol Arnold Chair of English, and Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and American Studies and Ethnicity, as well as a member of the steering committee for the Center for Transpacific Studies. His articles have appeared in numerous journals and books, including PMLA, American Literary History, Western American Literature, positions: east asia cultures critique, The New Centennial Review, Postmodern Culture, the Japanese Journal of American Studies, and Asian American Studies After Critical Mass. Many of his articles can be downloaded here.

Mara Mather’s research focuses on brain systems that regulate physiological and emotional arousal, how they affect attention, memory and decision making, and how these relationships change in aging. She has received the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association, a National Institutes of Health K02 Career Development award, an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship and a Max Planck Sabbatical Award. She has been identified as one of the top 1% of scientists worldwide. Her current research focuses on the role of noradrenaline in age-related change in cognition and on how heart rate variability biofeedback can enhance function of the brain’s emotion regulation networks. She received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Princeton University and completed her undergraduate degree and postdoctoral training at Stanford University.