Introduction
June 12, 12:30-2:30pm, E255
Readings: Selected reviews from Diplomatic History vol. 42, no. 3, June 2018
- Judy Wu, “What Makes a Good War Story? Absences of Empire, Race, and Gender in The Vietnam War,” pp. 416-422.
- Robert Buzzanco, “Don Draper Does Vietnam (a.k.a., Ken Burns Teaches the War in 10 Easy Lessons,” pp. 380-4.
- Kara Dixon Vuic, “Women and the Air-Conditioned Soldiers,” pp. 385-9.
- Edwin A. Martini, “The Placebo Effect: Reflections on Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novic’s The Vietnam War,” pp. 401-5.
- Nu-Anh Tran, “Add Vietnamese People and Stir?: A Reflection on Burns’s and Novick’s The Vietnam War and A Call for New Interpretations,” pp. 406-410.
Optional: watch Vietnam talk with Burns & Novick
Fall 2018
October 2 3:30-5:30pm, E255
Session leaders: Dave Hill and Neetu Kaushik
Readings:
- Chinua Achebe, “Girls at War” and “Civil Peace,” from Girls at War and Other Stories
- Joe Sacco, Palestine, Chapter 1
- Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains,“Foreword”
October 23 3:30-5:30pm, E242, visiting speaker, Rebecca Schneider
November 13 3:30-5:30pm, E255: “War, Advertising, and Mediated Memory”
Session leader: Will Fulton
Readings:
- “Reconstructing Warriors: Myth, Meaning, and Multiculturalism in US Army Advertising after Vietnam” by Jeremy K Saucier
- “Virtuous Victims, Visceral Violence: War and Melodrama in American Culture” by Jonna Eagle
December 4 3:30-5:30pm, E255: “Democratic Vistas: Ethics and Problematics of War Photography”
- Session leaders: Christopher Schmidt and Evelyn Burg
Readings:
- David Levi Strauss, Words not Spent Today Buy Smaller Images Tomorrow: Essays on the Present and Future of Photography (two essays: “Troublesomely Bound Up with Reality” and “Over Bin Laden’s Dead Body,” p. 1-7 and 18-22 respectively)
- Martha Rossler, “In, Around, and Afterthoughts (on documentary photography)”
Read one or both of the following:
- Kenneth Burke, “War, Response, and Contradiction”
- Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, chapter 5
Mid-year Institute
Fri Feb 8 10-2pm, E500: “What the Journey Does; What Stories Can and Cannot Do”
- Session leaders: Robin Kietlinski, Laura Tanenbaum, and Phyllis van Slyck
Readings:
All from The Displaced by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Viet Thanh Nguyen, “Introduction” (pages 11-20)
- Ariel Dorfman, “How Succulent Food Defeated Trump’s Wall Before It Has Been Built”
- Dina Nayeri, “The Ungrateful Refugee”
- Maaza Mengiste, “This is What the Journey Does”
Spring 2019
March 19 3:30-5:30pm, E255: “War in Colombia and new brands of Armed Neoliberalism”
- Session leaders: Rebecca Tally and Alcira Forero-Pena
Readings:
- Alexander L. Fattal, Guerilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia
Also: In preparation for our next visiting speaker, please read one or both of the following texts by John M. Kinder:
- Paying With Their Bodies, chapter 6
- “Militarizing the Menagerie” (in Martial Imagination; book distributed)
April 16 3:30-5:30pm, E500, visiting speaker: John Kinder
May 7 3:30-5:30pm, E255, visiting speakers: Richard Nisa and Yumi Lee
Readings:
- Richard Nisa, “Capturing the Forgotten War: Carceral Spaces and Colonial Legacies in Cold War Korea“
- Yumi Lee, “Cold War Erasures and the Asian American Immigrant Family in Ha Jin’s War Trash“
May 28 3:30-5:30pm, E255, “Gay in the Military: The LGBTQ Battle in Uniform”
- Session leaders: Stephen Clark and Arianna Martinez
Readings:
- Bernard D. Rostker, Susan D. Hosek, and Mary E. Vaiana, “Gays in the Military“
- Ross Benes, “How Exclusion From the Military Strengthened Gay Identity in America“
- Jasbir Puar, “Terrorist Assemblages“
Also submit assignment (prompt, abstract, and completed form), and complete evaluation
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