I regularly teach a survey course on the history of Vietnam, and I’m often struck by the stark differences between my introduction to the subject compared to my students. I grew up in a Vietnamese-American household, and I first learned history from my mother, who always taught in Vietnamese. She based her lessons on her […]
PARTICULARITY AND UNIVERSALITY IN THE TEACHING OF PREMODERN VIETNAMESE HISTORY Read More »
This is my last post (at least for a while) drawn from my syllabus for my course on the Vietnam War. (See the full sample syllabus here and here for more detail.) Below is the journal prompt and readings about the opposition to Ngô Đình Diệm that I assign for week 6. Following that is
I wanted to follow up my earlier posts about teaching the Vietnam War with sample readings, including some original translations. (See the full sample syllabus here and here for more detail.) In the box below is the journal prompt and readings about the land reform that I assign for week 4 of the course as
TEACHING THE VIETNAM WAR – A READING AND A MOVIE ABOUT THE LAND REFORM IN NORTH VIETNAM Read More »
I wanted to follow up my earlier posts about teaching the Vietnam War with sample readings, including some original translations. (See the full sample syllabus here and here for more detail.) In the box below is the journal prompt and readings about communism and republican nationalism that I assign for week 2 of the course
This post follows up on my previous one and offers a sample assignment for Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves. Turse’s book one of the major readings for my course on the history of the Vietnam War (syllabus found here and here). As I mentioned in an earlier post, I intentionally choose to teach Kill
TEACHING THE VIETNAM WAR – NICK TURSE’S KILL ANYTHING THAT MOVES AND A SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT Read More »
After sharing a syllabus for teaching the Vietnam War, I wanted to share a two sample assignments in this post and the next. One of the major readings on the syllabus is Nguyễn Công Luận’s memoir, Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars. I enjoy teaching this book for a number of reasons. First, the section
This post is a follow up to the previous one and features the second half of my sample syllabus for teaching the Vietnam War from multiple Vietnamese perspectives. SAMPLE SYLLABUS: HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR (second half of semester) CONFLICT (cont.) 8. The Big War Journal prompt: How did Hayslip and her family’s attitude towards
The Vietnam War is one of the most popular history courses on American college campuses, but the vast majority of such courses present the war as an event in American history. If professors incorporate Vietnamese perspectives at all, it is almost exclusively the perspective of Vietnamese communists, and students come away from the experience thinking