Charles Keith

Education
Ph.D., Yale University, 2008
A.B., Cornell University, 1999

Charles Keith is an historian of modern Vietnam. His research focuses on society, culture, and politics during the era of French colonial rule and decolonization.

Professor Keith’s first book, Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation (University of California Press, 2012), explores the evolution from a missionary-led to an independent national Church in Vietnam during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Catholic Vietnam received the 2015 Harry J. Benda Book Prize (Association for Asian Studies), the 2013 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize (French Colonial Historical Society), and the 2013 John Gilmary Shea Book Prize (American Catholic Historical Association). A Vietnamese translation has been published both in Vietnam (Nhà Xuất Bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia Sự Thật) and in the United States (Người Việt Press).

Professor Keith’s second book, Subjects and Sojourners: A History of Indochinese in France (University of California Press, 2024), explores the sojourns of Indochinese colonial subjects in France and the influence of these circulations on colonial and postcolonial societies in French colonial Southeast Asia. Subjects and Sojourners received Honorable Mention for the 2025 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize (French Colonial Historical Society). A Vietnamese translation is forthcoming (Nhà Xuất Bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia Sự Thật). A New Books Network podcast episode about the book is available here.

At MSU, Professor Keith is a core faculty member of the Asian Studies Center and an affiliated faculty member of the Asian Pacific American Studies Program. He is also co-Principal Investigator of the MSU Vietnam Group Archive, an NEH-funded project to digitize and disseminate materials generated by Michigan State’s technical assistance programs in South Vietnam from 1955-1962. Professor Keith served on the editorial board of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies from 2015-2022 (2015-18 as book review editor, 2018-2022 as co-editor-in-chief).