Contested Territory: America’s Involvement in Vietnam, 1945-1975

This NEH Summer Institute will explore modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts. Vietnam’s landscapes range from forests, over mountains, through fields, and downstream to river deltas. Vietnamese lives move from village to city, meander through cafes and rice paddies, cross oceans and land again. Many people called “Vietnamese” today did not even speak the national language until deep into the twentieth century.