Michael G. Vann (born June 19, 1967) is an American historian who serves as Professor of History at California State University, Sacramento.
His research specializes in the history of the French colonial empire, epidemic diseases such as the Third Bubonic Plague Pandemic, and Cold War era mass violence in Southeast Asia.
Vann holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was a student of Tyler Stovall and Edmund Burke III.
Vann has won three Fulbright awards, one for doctoral research in France, 1994–1995, and a Senior Scholar award to Indonesia, 2012–2013, and a third as a Senior Scholar in Cambodia, 2018–2019, where he taught history and did research on representations of Cold War era mass violence in Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Indonesian museums.
In Indonesia he was a visiting scholar for the History and American Studies departments at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Java.
Vann has published three books: The Colonial Good Life: André Joyeux's Vision of French Indochina,[2] 20th Century Voices: Selected Readings in World History,[3] and The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam.
[4][5] Vann was featured on public radio's Freakonomics, speaking about how his research on rat hunting in colonial Hanoi related to the economic concept "perverse incentive".
[7] He has also published articles on Indonesian history and politics, including the Cebongan Prison raid, 2013,[8] and Lawang Sewu, a Dutch era haunted house in Semarang.
[9] The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Race, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Graphic History Series).
(Co-authored with Liz Clarke) Instructor's Manual, Ways of the World: A Brief Global History with Sources.
(Author and Editor) "The Colonial Good Life:" A Commentary on Andre Joyeux's Vision of French Indochina.
Jacobin "Suharto's US-Backed Coup in Indonesia Supplied a Template for Worldwide Mass Murder".
Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, special issue "Pandemic Pedagogy: Reflections on teaching in times of global disruption", 2021.
The Abusable Past "'And not just the men, but the women and the children, too': Gendered Images of Violence in Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Cambodian Cold War Museums."
"Murder, Museums, and Memory: Cold War Public History in Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, and Phnom Penh."
Fiction and Film for Scholars of France "Book raids, Red-baiting and culture wars in the Indonesian presidential election."
"(Colonial) Intimacy Issues: Using French Hanoi to Teach the Histories of Sex, Racial Hierarchies, and Geographies of Desire in the New Imperialism."
American Historical Association "Sex and the Colonial City: Mapping Masculinity, Whiteness, and Desire in French Occupied Hanoi."
"Call Five-O a White Male Imperialist Fantasy: Steve McGarrett as a Vision of American Cold War Masculinity, Race, and Empire" in Lori McGuire (ed.
Co-authored by Ellen Wurtzel, Jeff Horn, Catherine Clark, and Michael G. Vann, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, 2016.
The Diplomat "Hanoi in the Time of Cholera: Epidemic Disease and Racial Power in the Colonial City" in Laurence Monnais and Harold J. Cook (eds.
), Global Movements, Local Concerns: Medicine and Health in Southeast Asia (National University Singapore Press), 2012.
Fiction and Film for Scholars of France "Fear and Loathing in French Hanoi: Colonial White Images and Imaginings of 'Native' Violence" in Martin Thomas (ed.)
"Placing East Timor on the Syllabus: Pedagogical Strategies for Teaching East Timor in University Level World History Survey Courses" in Michael Leach, Nuno Canas Mendes, Antero B. da Silva, Alarico da Costa Ximenes and Bob Boughto (eds.
"Of le Cafard and Other Tropical Diseases: Perceived Threats to White Colonial Culture in Indochina" in Jennifer Yee (ed.
"The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly: Variation and Difference in French Racial Thinking in Colonial Vietnam" in Tyler Stovall & Sue Peabody (ed.
His guests have ranged from Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient Viet Thanh Nguyen to dirtbag left podcaster Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House.
Hailing from O'ahu, Hawai'i, Vann is an accomplished surfer[citation needed] who frequently travels to Indonesia.
He has taught Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Santa Cruz, California for Claudio França BJJ, Kaijin MMA, and Garth Taylor Jiu-Jitsu.
He also taught Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at Hanoi BJJ in Vietnam and Kingdom Fight Gym in Siem Reap, Cambodia.