The Vietnam War

Catalog description

This intensive research seminar explores the US war in Vietnam, its contestation, and its afterlives. Students will conduct independent archival research to produce an original essay on a topic of their choice. Papers might explore the political origins and consequences of the war; the catastrophic destruction that the war wrought in Vietnam; the relationship of the war to race, class, and gender inequalities in the trans-Pacific and the United States; the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s; the war’s devastating health and environmental consequences in the US and Vietnam; the experiences of Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, and US soldiers who fought in Vietnam; US-sponsored programs for capitalist development that formed part of the war; the role of Vietnamese and US religious communities in the war; the GI movement that resisted both the war and racism in the military; the role of US scientists, social scientists and corporations in facilitating the war effort, and the reckoning they faced; the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees across the Pacific and the United States after 1975; postwar initiatives for restitution, justice, and reconciliation; and disability politics that emerged from the war. History majors may use this course to fulfill requirements for the Diplomatic, Intellectual, or Political History concentration, depending on the topic of the research paper.