This course will be a research seminar in American history, focusing on the American experience in Vietnam and the implications of that involvement for the years following the war. We will look at number aspects with regard to Vietnam-political, diplomatic, social, and cultural.
1. You are do to the required reading for each class meeting and participate in the general discussions. For the nine weeks after the two introductory sections, this will involve assigned reading. For the last two sections, you will be required to read the rough drafts of the seminar papers of those who are presenting their research that week. One quarter of your grade will be determined by your overall class participation.
2. After you select the general area of your research for the semester, you will be responsible for a background report and some portion of the class discussion for the week we deal with that area.
3. You will write a seminar paper on a specific topic within the larger area you have chosen. During the semester you will write two brief abstracts, as well as the final paper. The three papers are discussed at the end of the syllabus. The last three class meetings have been set aside for presentations of your final seminar papers.
In terms of your course grade, the various parts divide as follows:
Seminar Paper 40%
(including final presentation)Abstracts 20% (10% each)
Background Report 15%
General Class Discussion 25%
Sept 9: Introduction
Sept 16: Researching at Paper at Wheaton and Selection of Topics
Sept 23: On the Cold War Periphery: The French, The Americans, and Indochina--Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy
Sept 30: Lyndon Johnson's War: Losing Hearts and Minds
Oct 7: Richard Nixon's War: Peace, But What Honor?
Oct 21: In Country: The Experience of War
Oct 28: The War At Home
Nov 4: The Vietnam Vets: Neglected , Memorialized, Mythologized
Nov 11: The Cultural Response: If You Can't Win It On The Battlefield, Win It At The Movies or The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword
Nov 18: "Real Men Don't Lose Wars": Masculinity After Vietnam
Nov 25: Overcoming the "Vietnam Syndrome": Political
Cynicism and
International Hesitancy
Dec 2-9 : Presentation of Seminar Papers
Web Assignments
As part of the regular reading for this course, two of the weekly assignments involve using the World Wide Web. In each case you are to read specific shared assignments, as well as do some individual investigation of material on your own.
You can access the assigned material either by copying the URLs from this syllabus and typing them into the browser you are using or by going to the on-line syllabus and following on the links.
In addition, you are to find, read, and assess two additional observations, memoirs, reflections, or other primary material from the internet that describes the experiences of individuals in Vietnam. You can locate sites that contain this material by using the links on Vietnam and other appropriate web pages or by entering subject headings into one of the search engines.
For the two sites you choose, fill out one of the "web-site" forms handled out in class and slide it under my door by 10:00 on the morning of our discussion.
Web Assignment #1 (October 21):
"In Country: The Experience of War"
You are to read the following on-line material.
"Arrival
in Country" by Roland Kunkel
First person narrative account about facing the realities of arriving in
Vietnam.
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/shwv/per-nar/96n07528.htm
"A
Day in the Life of Ground Surveillance Doppler Radar," by David Stafford
Narrative describing a "typical" day for an artillery radar man.
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/shwv/per-nar/96n07551.htm
"The
Two Women," by Tom Dier
A personal narrative about a week long patrol in the mountainous triple
canopy of Vietnam.
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/shwv/per-nar/96n08335.htm
"The
Commo Man," by Pete Childress
Narrative about the shooting of a Vietnamese civilian.
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/shwv/per-nar/commoman.htm
Web Assignment #2 (October 25):
"The Vietnam Vets: Neglected, Memorialized, Mythologized"
You are to read the following on-line material.
"What is a Vietnam Veteran?"
by Dan Mouer
http://grunt.space.swri.edu/whatis2.htmhttp://www.vvnw.org/vvnw/post.htm
"Service Without Reward--Basic
Overview of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder," by Jim Loughrey
http://www.vvnw.org/vvnw/post.htm
"The
Speed of Darkness and 'Crazed Vets on the Doorstep' Drama," by David
J. DeRose,
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Reviews/DeRose_Crazed_Vets.html
"The Healing,"
by SSgt Bruce T. Forbes
http://grunt.space.swri.edu/forbes3.htm
"Facing the Past,"
by Sally Griffis
http://grunt.space.swri.edu/facepast.htm
These are potential paper topic areas within the larger topics we will cover. This listing is meant to be suggestive, not comprehensive.
On the Cold War Periphery: The French, The Americans and Indochina-Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy
includes American support for the French, U.S. undermining of the Geneva Accords, the creation of South Vietnam and Diem regime, CIA activity in Indochina, Kennedy's support of South Vietnam, and Diem assassination.
Lyndon Johnson's War: Losing Hearts and Minds
includes Johnson's inheriting of war, the Tonkin Gulf incident, the escalation of war between 1965 and 1968, the abortive peace attempts, the Tet Offensive, Johnson's withdrawal from the Presidential race.
Richard Nixon's War: Peace, But What Honor?
includes Nixon's 1968 campaign, his plan for Vietnamization, Henry Kissinger's foreign policy, "peace with honor," the emerging POW issue, and American withdrawal.
In Country: The Experience of War
includes soldiers' expectations versus their experiences, the draft, women in Vietnam, comparisons and contrasts with previous wars, and their homecoming.
The War At Home
includes the growth of antiwar movement, connection to other issues in society such as the student movement and civil rights, draft resistance, the McCarthy and Kennedy campaigns, Kent State.
"The Vietnam Vets: Neglected, Memorialized, Mythologized"
includes the treatment of the Vets in the 70s, POW-MIA issue, Agent Orange, the movement to build the Vietnam Veterans' memorial, the relegitimazation of the Vets, and the deligitimazation of the antiwar movement.
The Cultural Response: If You Can't Win It On The Battlefield, Win It At The Movies and The Pen is mightier Than the Sword
includes the way the popular perspective about Vietnam changed in films-from "Coming Home," "Apocalypse Now," and "The Deer Hunter" in the 1970s to "Rambo" and "Missing in Action" in the 1980s to 1990s generic use-as well as the evolution of Vietnam literature, both realistic and romantic.
"Real Men Don't Lose Wars": Masculinity After Vietnam
includes the way definitions of masculinity changed in the 1970s, with the overlap of the women's movement, as well as the reassertion of masculine identify in the 1980s. also might include the new mythology that grew in the 1980s that "we could have won the war."
Overcoming the "Vietnam Syndrome": Political Cynicism and International Hesitancy
includes the end of the war's coincidence with Watergate which leads to growing cynicism about government, the Carter campaign of 1976, and subsequent cynical attitude on part of Americans to government truth and function. also, the ways foreign policy has been affected by the Vietnam ghost and attempts to overcome the "Vietnam syndrome," including the rhetoric surrounding the Gulf War.
In addition to the traditional sources of primary and secondary research, there has been an explosion of material abut Vietnam on the Internet. Just the term "Vietnam," brings 90,000 potential sites from one search engine. This presents both enormous opportunities and a new set of problems.
You have access to tremendous amounts of material, but it is neither efficiently organized nor are the materials screened for accuracy or legitimacy as they would be in a library. You must exercise many of the same cautions and assessment devices you would with any material. Who is the source? What is his or her legitimacy? Are these scholarly conclusions or personal observations? Just because someone says something-and even if it is from personal experience-does not make it true or an accurate generalization.
Take advantage of the material available on the web, but understand both its promise and potential pitfalls. Below are listed just a few of the thousands of potential sites. Many include "links pages" to take you to other sites. These are only places you might begin.
A good place to begin for a general bibliographic sources might be the comprehensive
Vietnam
War Bibliography compiled by Edwin E. Moïse.
http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~eemoise/bibliography.html/
A site that provides a large
number of links.
http://www.shss.montclair.edu/english/furr/vietnam.html
The Sixties
Project and Vietnam Generation pages contain an enormous amount of important
information, as well as directions to other useful sites.
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/sixties/
The Vietnam
War Homepage offers a wide series of links to a variety of sources and
topics relating to the war.
http://www.bev.net/computer/htmlhelp/vietnam.html
The Vietnam
War Newsgroup maintains a home page which includes their history, a
listing of bibliographies, a collection of Viet Nam war images, a listing
of related sites, a POW-MIA page, and a page featuring veterans' personal
narratives.
http://www.panix.com/~tegtmeie/shwv/shwvhome.html
A collection of WWW Home
Pages from around the World:
http://www.vietvet.org/vietlink.htm
Individual sites that may relate to specific topics.
A site for Government
Documents, including the Senate Select POW-MIA Affairs Report, the State
Department White Paper on Vietnam, the Tonkin Gulf Message and Resolution,
Two Letters to Ngo Dinh Diem, and the Vietnam Vets Against the War Statement:
gopher://wiretap.spies.com/11/Gov/US-History/Vietnam
The Vietnam
Memoirs page includes numerous first person accounts of the Vietnam
experience written in the 1970s:
http://marlowe.wimsey.com/rshand/reflections/vietnam/vietnam.html
Emi's Online
Antiwar Anthology:
http://ftp.std.com/obi/Emi.Anthology/intro.html
The records of Women's
Strike For Peace:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace/DG115WSP.html
The Vietnam Veteran's Homepage:
http://www.vietvet.org/
or
http://grunt.space.swri.edu/
The Vietnam Veterans Against
the War homepage:
http://www.prairienet.org/vvaw/
One way to measure public attitudes, including cynicism, is by popular opinion sampling.
The Gallup
Poll Newsletter Archive is at:
http://www.gallup.com/newsletter/may95/6confid.html
The center of the research seminar in history is the seminar paper. A seminar paper is one that involves research using primary sources. The nature of a primary source may vary from topic to topic, but it is generally defined as the use of actual historical material, rather than using what some analyst has concluded after the fact. That is a secondary source. Primary sources include documents of the period and remembrances of the participants. (An autobiography is a primary source, for example, while a biography is a secondary source.)
The assignments below are designed to structure your research and preparation. The final paper should be easier because thinking has been done along the way.
1. Statement of Topic, Secondary Source Reading, and Research Proposal
All history begins with secondary source research-searching for the major historical themes, coming to know the individuals and events of an area, and learning what has already been done. Once you understand what is available and important in your area, you will be able to better define your topic and to choose one in which you will be able to find material.
When this initial process is completed, write a one- to two-page statement which describes your defined topic, the main issues within the area of your seminar paper, the available material, and a plan for your primary source research. This will be due in class October 21.
Your paper is to do more than merely report on your research. It must present an interpretation or analysis of the topic. In other words, your paper must have an argument supported by the evidence you have gathered. Before you begin to write the seminar paper, you need to submit a one-page statement of the basic position you are about to argue. This is due in class on November 11.
3. The Seminar Paper: Rough and Final Draft
The seminar paper is to present your working out of the ideas developed from your research and explained in your abstract. A rough draft your paper is to be ready for the week of your final presentation, December 2-9. The specific date will be assigned in class. You need to have a copy available for other class members to read before class, so they can discuss and comment on your work.
The final paper is to be twenty pages and is due at the last class, December 9. This paper should be well-organized, footnoted, provide a bibliography of works consulted, and offer the reader an historical analysis with supporting evidence. You should use as your models any of the main articles in historical journals such as The Journal of American History, The American Historical Review or The American Quarterly. We will discuss in more detail specific questions of references, citations, and format as the semester progresses.
Last update 12/97