As a young girl visiting Vicksburg, Mississippi, Julia Nguyen encountered a Civil War statue. It altered not only the way she understands history, but the way she thinks about that very concept. Transcript I’m Julia Nguyen and my Humanities Moment, or at least this one because my life has been full of Humanities Moments, as … Continued
There’s a game I like to play in class called “Look At.” We practice our close reading skills by gazing at a picture for 3 minutes and then writing down everything we see (or don’t see) about that image by starting each sentence with: “Look at…” When I first looked at Vietnamese American artist Dinh … Continued
The study of contested territory for me has alway been a story of land and/or ideological dispute between colonial powers, regional peoples, religious factions, or other distinctions that come into play as humans acquire land and promulgate cultural traits and ideologies. Contested territory is more than a story of “us versus them” or “them vs. … Continued
The video clip I saw of a young Vietnamese-American woman who opened an art gallery in Vietnam led to my humanities moment. She said that her mother disowned her because of her decision to go back to Vietnam. I could relate this to my personal experience. My mother was very upset when any one of … Continued
My moment was a culmination of two. The first was the image or video taken from Muhammad Ali’s comments regarding the Vietnam War. I have played this video many times in class to highlight the conflicting viewpoints and social implications of the Vietnam War. Considering the backlash experienced by Ali followed by his most recent … Continued
During the NEH Summer Institute on Contested Territory, a moment occurred in a lecture Christian Lentz gave on the Struggles at Dien Bien Phu that caused me to reconsider the agency of marginalized groups. When presenting the notion of conscripted labor during the war effort for the various ethnic groups living in the hills surrounding … Continued
“Vietnam” has been a contested idea for a long time. As an American History teacher, I tend to offer my students a compelling look at the American government’s military intervention in Vietnam from the early 1960s to the mid 1970s. Over the course of two weeks with teacher colleagues from all over the country and … Continued
Human connection is the most important part of life to me. I really value great relationships and look forward to connecting with new people every chance I get. Obviously, I am not going to have the same views on every single topic as anyone else. I think we make the biggest growth as human beings … Continued
The introduction of the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence from the Nancy Gardner presentation was one of the high points of the week for me. Until that time I had not even presumed that such a document existed. To find out that the document was actually written by Ho Chi Minh himself was an eye opener. … Continued
On May 8th, 1957, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was greeted by President Dwight Eisenhower (along with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles) at Washington National Airport at the beginning of an official state visit for President Diem. This seemingly ordinary photo is noteworthy because it captures the complexity of the Cold War and … Continued