This post marks a new irregular series about professional work that is outside of my regular research and teaching but that are still informed by my academic training. I think of it as fun, cool, creative things that I get to do as a history professor now that I’ve received tenure. Of course, teaching my […]
COOL THINGS THAT HISTORIANS DO: TEACHING VIDEOS ON THE VIETNAM WAR (1) Read More »
Happy New Year! Chúc mừng năm mới! Another year, another holiday song… Phạm Đình Chương’s “A Celebratory Glass of Wine” was one of my favorite holiday songs for the Lunar New Year when I was a kid. It was the last song on Tiếng Tơ Đồng Xuân (The Silken Strings of Spring), a Tết album
Phạm Duy’s “Riddles” (“Đố ai,” 1954?) is a charming song that mixes tradition and modernity. It is the last track on Saigon Rock & Soul, and this post will probably be my last one in my series-within-a-series translating the lyrics of songs from that CD. “Riddles” exemplifies a Vietnamese musical genre known as “new folk
MEMORABLE MUSIC: PHẠM’ DUY’S “RIDDLES” (“ĐỐ AI”), TRACK 17 ON SAIGON ROCK & SOUL 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
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