Pacific Worlds: Vietnam

Catalog description

Reflecting our increasingly diverse world and echoing scholarly attempts to move beyond the bounds of national and imperial histories, this Penn Global Seminar highlights the interaction of peoples and cultures across what may be described as the most dynamic world region of the twenty-first century, the Asia-Pacific. While discussions of Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean Worlds are now commonplace, scholars have, to date, paid less attention to the idea of a Pacific World or Worlds. To what extent are patterns of culture, climate, trade, migration, empire, and war distinctive in the Asia-Pacific? To what extent can they enrich our Euro-American-centric notions of history and modern life? Each iteration of this Penn Global Seminar will include a travel component to a different area of the Pacific. In this course, we travel to Vietnam.