Christoph Giebel (History & International Studies)

Judith Henchy (UW Libraries)

This project is based on the understanding that modern Vietnamese historiography has been unduly dominated by several particular and at times overlapping discourses reflective of the prevalent ideological presumptions of the 20th century, such as

• those that privilege the perspectives, interests, and actions of a central state or states;
• those that impose nationalist and traditionalist notions on Vietnamese history and culture;
• those that subsume Vietnamese revolutionary visions and movements solely under communist teleologies; and
• those that seek to enforce Cold War rhetorical postures by excluding, externalizing and de-legitimizing those that do not fit simplistic binaries.

By contrast, these workshops will highlight academic work that complicates, challenges, and counters these paradigms, thereby enriching and expanding our understanding of the variety of modern Vietnamese historical actors, factors, and epistemologies, and suggesting the contours of alternative models. They will focus, for instance, on local, regional, cross-border or transnational identities, non-nationalist socio-cultural phenomena such as religious revivalist movements, the rich modernist possibilities explored in the 1920s and 1930s, non-communist thought in Viet Nam's revolutionary anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, so-called "third force" groups on the margins of, or in opposition to, the Republic of Viet Nam, and the variety of overseas exile experiences in colonial, war time, post-war, and socialist contexts. In general, we hope to encourage papers that engage a broad range of sources and literatures.