By establishing a new program of Vietnamese studies with the recent additions of John Phan and Lin-Hng Nguyn, EALAC distinguishes itself as one of the only departments worldwide to comprise all major East Asian cultures. John Phan is an expert on the history of languages in Vietnam, from premodern to early-modern times, including both spoken and literary forms. His work focuses particularly on the dynamic relationship between China and Vietnam, and between Literary Chinese and vernacular Vietnamese languages in history. Phan's work on premodern Vietnam is complemented by the expertise of Lin-Hng Nguyn, the Dorothy Borg Associate Professor in the History of the United States and East Asia, and a renowned expert on U.S.-Vietnam relations in the Vietnamese theater of the cold war. Nguyn's work focuses on the web of Cold War international relations that enmeshed both North and South Vietnam, as they struggled through the Second Indochina War. In all their work, Phan & Nguyn focus on connections, exchanges, and repercussive contact between Vietnam and its neighbors, in both East and Southeast Asia, and emphasize an interregional approach to the study of Vietnam.