Whose Vietnam?

Submitted by MaureenA on Fri, 03/05/2010 - 14:56

8 October 2010
Amsterdam

Whose Vietnam? The enduring echo of the Vietnam War
A University of Amsterdam conference / Netherlands Americans Studies Association Fall Event

Ever since the end of the Vietnam War, debate has continued to exist on fundamental issues of the war and its legacy. One of the reasons for these lasting disagreements is the metaphorical nature that the Vietnam War has obtained over the years, entangling it with crucial political, military, social and cultural issues that shaped the United States since the 1960s. As Americans continue to debate, interpret, mediate and manipulate the history of that war in search to find lessons and give meaning to the ordeal of Vietnam, always hotly debated and leading to divergent and often contradictory historical analogies.

Problematic as the memories of Vietnam may be, their emotional power has made them impossible to deny. They influenced amongst others literature, from Dispatches to Trea of Smoke, movies, from Rambo to Forrest Gump, international relations, as analogies with Iraq and Afghanistan, and as an important issue in domestic political campaigns. 'Vietnam' not only influenced practical issues like how to fight a war, but also on more elusive issues of identity and morality.

This conference will provide a platform to discuss the many ways in which the memories of the Vietnam War are constructed, mediated and politicized and how we should perceive their impact. From an interdisciplinary perspective it welcomes topics as diverse as domestic and international politics, military aspects and social issues, but also the Vietnam legacy in film, art, literature and poetry, photography and what we can call 'memorialization'.

The conference aims to be a forum for established scholars to discuss possible new angles and approaches to the study of the Vietnam War legacy, but also welcomes graduate students in an advanced stage of their PhD. Please submit proposals by email to Beerd Beukenhorst, MA:
H.B.Beukenhorst@uva.nl

Deadline:  30 April 2010

Authors will be notified about the status of their proposal no later than 1 May 2010. The lingua franca of the conference is English.

Each submission should include a 500-word proposal of the paper that is to be considered for presentation and a 200-word biographical sketch of the author(s).
Please note; a publication in relation to this conference is being prepared, and it is our intention to publish a selection of the papers in a peer-reviewed and internationally distributed volume.

Along with the presentation of accepted papers, the conference will feature speakers representing a variety of aspects of the Vietnam War legacy.

For more information, please contact prof. dr. Ruud Janssens
 R.V.A.Janssens@uva.nl or Beerd Beukenhorst, MA H.B.Beukenhorst@uva.nl