Lectures and Reading Lists – Day Three

HOME     LECTURES AND READING LISTS     TEAM     CONTACT

Day Three – Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Lecture – “Teaching the Vietnam War: Oral Histories from ‘All Sides’” by Christian Appy

Objectives: Complete assigned readings on the Vietnam War to support Faculty and Staff presentations. Recommended readings are provided to explore additional content. Also see Day One reading collections for recommendations.

Key Questions

1. Who served in the Vietnam War?
2. What does it mean to study the Vietnam War from “all sides”?
3. How has the Vietnam War affected American politics, culture, and national identity?

Assigned Readings

Assigned readings provide support for Faculty and Staff presentations on their respective days.

• Christian Appy, “Introduction: Who Are We?” in American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (2015)
• Christian Appy, Selected primary sources from Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides (2003)

Recommended Readings

Recommended readings include additional material to expand upon faculty presentations, Choices Program curriculum units, and other content focused on teaching about war.

• Choices Program, The Vietnam War: Origins, History, and Legacies (We encourage you to browse through our curriculum’s Student Text and Teacher Resource Book, but we are not asking you to read the entirety of the curriculum.)

Additional Readings

Part I of the Framework: Vietnam War Collection (combined into one reading)

• Fredrik Logevall, “Choosing War,” an excerpt from Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (1999)
• Robert Buzzanco, “International Capitalism and Communism Collide with Vietnamese Nationalism,” an excerpt from “The United States and Vietnam: Capitalism, Communism, and Containment,” in Peter Halm and Mary Ann Heiss, eds., Empire and Revolution: The United States and the Third World Since 1945 (2001)

Part II of the Framework: Vietnam War Collection

• Simeon Man, “Fighting ‘G****’: Asian Americans and the Vietnam War” in Soldiering Through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific (2018)
• Tom Holm, “Strong Hearts, Wounded Souls: An Excerpt: Chapter 4: A Legacy of War: The American Indian Vietnam Generation,” Wicazo Sa Review (Autumn, 1995) and Matthias Voigt, “‘Fighting for Their Freedom at Home’: Native American Vietnam Veterans in the Red Power Movement, 1969-1973” in War Veterans and the World After 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory (eds. Ángel Alcalde and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas) (2018)
• Steven Rosales, “Macho Nation? Chicano Soldiering, Sexuality, and Manhood during the Vietnam War Era,” The Oral History Review (2013)
• Kimberly L. Phillips, “Machine Gun Blues: Black America and the Vietnam War” in War! What Is It Good For? Black Freedom Struggles & the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq” (2012)
• Kara Dixon Vuic, “‘You Mean We Get Women Over Here?’: Gender and Sexuality in the War Zone,” in Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War (2010)

Part III of the Framework: Vietnam War Collection

• Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Remembering War, Dreaming Peace: On Cosmopolitanism, Compassion, and Literature” in Four Decades On: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War (eds. Scott Laderman and Edwin A. Martini) (2013)
• Diane Niblack Fox, “Agent Orange: Coming to Terms with a Transnational Legacy” in Four Decades On: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War (eds. Scott Laderman and Edwin A. Martini) (2013)
• David Kieran, “‘The Lessons of History’: Vietnam’s Legacy during the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan” in Forever Vietnam: How a Divisive War Changed American Public Memory (2014)
• Nu-Anh Tran, “The Neglect of the Republic of Vietnam in the American Historical Memory” in The Republic of Vietnam, 1955–1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation Building (eds. Tuong Vu and Sean Fear) (2019)
• Patrick Hagopian, “‘Something Rather Dark and Bloody’: Atrocities, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the Pathologization of Vietnam Veterans” in The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing (2009)

Day One
Day Two
Day Four
Day Five