Fifty years after the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, how should we reconsider the geopolitical, intellectual, and cultural legacies of the Vietnam War in both American and global contexts? How can we move beyond the binary logic of democracy versus totalitarianism, the totalizing and framing power of which has neutralized anti-colonial and decolonial energies in the Asia Pacific, and reread the Vietnam War in relation to French and European colonial and imperial wars fought in Asia and Africa since the nineteenth century? How do we interrogate the root causes of the Vietnam War in light of the 1955 Bandung Conference, which demanded peace for the Global South and an end to all colonial and imperial wars? Meanwhile, how have movements and alliances responding to and against the Vietnam War transformed the political landscapes of the United States and the globe? How has anti-war activism intersected intellectually and biopolitically with American and global movements promoting third-world liberation, civil rights, women’s liberation, and LGBTQI rights? How will the Vietnam War’s legacy continue to shape rising tensions in the Asia-Pacific in the era of “Cold War 2.0”?
In the field of representation, Vietnam War literature, cinema, and culture have been given renewed urgency and critical vitality in recent years by the proliferation of alternative narratives and visions of the conflict and its aftermaths. Women veterans, Vietnamese veterans of the North and the South, war refugees and immigrants from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and a new generation of Southeast Asian Americans have articulated their own senses of and reflections on the war and its consequences. Not only have these newly assertive voices and perspectives raised questions related to the ethics of warfare, the culture industry, and the politics of representation, but they have also contributed to the development of innovative fields such as critical refugee studies and warfare ecology studies, which have important implications for all war studies. These conceptual tools suggest productive ways to revisit and reinterpret more traditional representations of the Vietnam War experiences.
This symposium seeks to address both past and present moments in the formation and development of Vietnam War literature and culture, situating them in dialogue with various cultural histories as well as with anticipations of a global future. Participants are welcome to use and/or combine the disciplinary discourses and methodologies of literary and cultural studies, history, political science, and other relevant fields. We invite papers that might address, but should not be limited by, the following questions: How can Vietnam War literature be reread in relation to French and European literatures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? What problems and questions concerning the ethics and politics of war and its representation arise in the context of Vietnam and connect it to other regions, histories, and discourses? How might we use what Kuan-Hsing Chen calls “Asia as method” to reconsider GI accounts of the war in the decolonizing context of the transpacific? How and with what implications do the stories told by women veterans, civilians, and others differ from the established codes and modes of narration? How and why have mainstream national and international cinemas and more experimental productions represented Vietnam on film, and what medium-specific resources does cinema afford for thinking through issues raised by the war? What was the impact of Hollywood and rock and roll music on structures of feeling in the Cold War United States? How do we reassess the humanitarian and ecological consequences of the war? How did the anti-war movement inform and reshape US democracy and global resistance movements? What possible lessons drawn from the war could inform possible US interventions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea?
We also welcome presentations that explore the following topics and themes: How do Southeast Asian and all war refugee narratives perform and figure the memory and postmemory of wartime violence? What is the role of South Korean cinema in (re)constructing the Vietnam War’s image for the global market? What is the pre-life and afterlife of the Vietnam War? To what extent are US efforts to promote democracy and human rights crucial—or potentially detrimental—to the stability and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific?
Please submit your 100-word abstract and 1-paragraph bio and direct any questions to Dr. Yuan Shu (eng.complit@ttu.edu). The deadline for submission is January 31, 2025.
