2
30
111
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/5/148/3BlindMice.jpg
2a617ac51cbbaa7ee943175d21c5224f
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Three Blind Mice
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California Humanities: “We Are the Humanities”
Description
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To celebrate its 40th anniversary, California Humanities invited a group of 40 prominent Californians to share what the humanities meant to them, helped shape their lives and their understanding of the world. The complete archive of these recollections is available at http://calhum.org/about/we-are-the-humanities.
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california-humanities
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<iframe width="480" height="270" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/abSgSCoi47Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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Learning to Sing Stories
Description
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<p>Juan Felipe Herrera, a performance artist, activist, and U.S. poet laureate in 2015, recalls how his third-grade teacher’s compliment on his singing voice led to his lifelong belief in using his voice to encourage the beauty in the voices, stories, and, experiences of others. He goes on to speak about the power of the humanities to warm communities, create peace, and, move hearts.</p>
<p>To celebrate its 40th year anniversary of grant making, programming, and partnerships that connect Californians to each other, California Humanities invited a group of 40 prominent Californians to explore what the humanities mean to them. For more information visit <a href="http://calhum.org/about/we-are-the-humanities" title="California Humanities: We Are the Humanities" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">California Humanities: We Are the Humanities</a>.</p>
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Juan Felipe Herrera, performance artist, activist, and U.S. Poet Laureate in 2015
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juan-felipe-herrera
Activism
Emotional Experience
Listening
Oral Tradition
Performing Arts
Poets
Poets Laureate
San Diego, California
Singing
Storytelling
Teachers & Teaching
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/6/164/top-secret-rosies-900x562.jpg
5322212c11e43f24fde91dbef3c9fea9
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Rosie the Riviter
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Weaver Academy
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This collection includes contributions from the students and staff of <a href="http://weaver.gcsnc.com/pages/Weaver_Academy">Weaver Academy for the Performing and Visual Arts</a>, located in Greensboro, North Carolina.
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weaver-academy
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<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/809871178&color=%2355d7d2&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=false&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=false"></iframe>
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<p>In 1942, soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a secret military program was launched to recruit female mathematicians to be human computers. These women were pulled from high schools and universities, and their work computing the trajectories of U.S. ballistics was critical to the success of our military operations.</p>
<p>A handful of these women are interviewed in the documentary <em>Top Secret Rosies</em> and I was drawn in when one of the Rosies said that she credits her high school math teacher, Miss Clark, for her interest in advanced skills in mathematics.</p>
<p>As a lateral-entry high school math teacher, who’s been in the classroom only two years, I’ve thought a lot about Miss Clark. I wonder who I would have been in 1942, and would I have had the strength and confidence to be one of these young women? Would I have had the spirit to encourage young women to accept these jobs if I had been their math teacher? My mind then brings me to today. Am I doing everything in my power to engage and energize my students, so that they are open to their own potential and any opportunities that may come their way?</p>
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Top Secret Rosies
Description
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<p>A high school math teacher discusses the documentary <em>Top Secret Rosies: The Female “Computers” of WWII</em>. Beyond the awe for these women who took part in American military operations as human computers during World War II, this contributor is inspired by a statement made by one of the women in the movie, crediting her high school math teacher for her interest and advanced skills in mathematics.</p>
<p></p>
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Anonymous
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top-secret-rosies
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As a high school math teacher herself, this contributor understands the impact she can have on the life of her students, leading her to reflect on her own teaching: “Am I doing everything in my power to engage and energize my students so that they are open to their own potential and any opportunities that may come their way?”
Source
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The documentary film <em>Top Secret Rosies: The Female “Computers” of WWII</em>
Attack on Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), 1941
Documentary Films
Inspiration
Mathematics
Rosie the Riveter
Teachers & Teaching
Top Secret Rosies: The Female "Computers" of WWII
Women's History
World War II (1939-1945)
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/169/kennedys.jpeg
4043164748676d5eae8cf7df568b00c9
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Jackie O. and John F. Kennedy engagement photo by Richard Avedon
Moving Image
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/B3voqrDJaDg" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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Discovering How Literature and Art Place Demands on Us
Description
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<p>From reading <em>Crime and Punishment</em> as a high school senior and the Depression-era masterpieces <em>Absalom, Absolom!</em> and <em>Let Us Now Praise Famous Men</em> in college, Gil Greggs describes a personal journey of discovery about the ways literature connects readers to the real world.</p>
<p>Later, he describes how the portraits painted by Rembrandt and photographs taken by Richard Avedon help us notice and better appreciate the humanity of the people around us and to perceive hints of their inner lives.</p>
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Dr. Gil Greggs, Director of Academic Programs, St. David’s School, Raleigh NC
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gil-greggs-learning-to-read-in-order-to-see
Absalom, Absalom!
Agee, James
Avedon, Richard
Books & Reading
Crime and Punishment
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Evans, Walker
Faulkner, William
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Literature
Paintings
Photography
Rembrant, Harmenszoon van Rijn
Teachers & Teaching
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/8/171/Gilgamesh.jpeg
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Gilgamesh
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National Humanities Center Fellows
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Any contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
Description
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This collection includes contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
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<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/809871535&color=%2355d7d2&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=false&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=false"></iframe>
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<p>I’m Hollis Robbins and the Delta Delta Delta fellow at the National Humanities Center, 2017–18. I was thinking about how I ended up as a scholar of the humanities and the origin would be in 1979. I had gone to college at age 16 under a math program for girls who were gifted at math. I found myself at Johns Hopkins very young and intending to study math and I signed up for a course in humanities, I think called just “Humanities” with the excellent Richard Maxey.</p>
<p>That fall he had a visiting scholar. I had no idea who it was: it was René Girard, who had just finished writing <em>Things Hidden Since The Foundation of the World</em>, in which he set forth his theory of mimesis and mimetic desire. I remember walking into the seminar room one day, from fairly rural New Hampshire and for me books were just things that you read. I had no intention in studying literature in college and here comes this man with these—what I remember mostly is his humongous eyebrows—talking about the Gilgamesh epic and his theory of mimetic desire. That our desires do not emerge from us, but our desires emerge from imitating others’ desires, that we see somebody desiring something and that we begin to desire that. He went through the Epic of Gilgamesh to play out this theory.</p>
<p>At 16 years old sitting in this classroom, the seminar room listening to him, I thought he was wrong. I thought, now I don’t know anything but what I know from reading books, from reading <em>Moby-Dick</em>, from reading Dickens, from reading anything I could get my hands on, that people like very strange things. People are self-indulgent, self-defeating, there isn’t a character in anything written by Charles Dickens that I would want to mirror or desire. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately in arguments about—or debates about, or sort of current discourse about—slow attention spans in our students. That our students can’t read whole novels. Can’t sit and digest an epic poem. Couldn’t converse for a two-and-a-half-hour seminar without their smart phone devices.</p>
<p>I think that this is, again, quite wrong. My experience in the classroom—let me just reach for <em>Moby-Dick</em>, which I teach every spring—is that students want something different. They want to reach across centuries. They want to reach across continents. They want not to have what they are familiar with spoon-fed to them. When they are given worlds, continents, thousands of individuals characters, situations, their desires will emerge from the experience of reading literature. I’ve had students in my office who want to talk about poor drowned Pip in <em>Moby-Dick</em> or who want to understand Queequeg’s great dive into the water to save a passenger that has just insulted him.</p>
<p>Literature frees young people from the constant barrage of familiarity that social media is giving them so I’m kind of pleased with myself, actually, at so long ago having my own opinion about René Girard.</p>
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Finding Freedom from the Familiar
Description
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<p>In 1979, at age 16, Hollis Robbins found herself enrolled at John Hopkins University. Though she was there as part of a program for girls who excelled in math, she signed up for a humanities lecture class. In that day’s class, drawing upon the epic of Gilgamesh, a guest lecturer expounded on the theory of “mimetic desire,” or the idea that we borrow our desires from other people. Unbeknownst to her, the speaker was none other than famed anthropological philosopher René Girard. Yet, Hollis disagreed. In her opinion, culled from reading stories such as those of Herman Melville and Charles Dickens, people actually like “very strange things.” They are drawn to things that are different from themselves.</p>
<p>Today, as a professor of literature, her conviction holds strong, supported by experiences such as teaching Melville’s <em>Moby-Dick</em>. She finds that contrary to present-day despair about their “slow attention spans,” students want to reach across centuries to worlds unfamiliar from their own.</p>
Date
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1979
Contributor
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<a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/meet-the-fellows/hollis-robbins/">Hollis Robbins</a>, Johns Hopkins University
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robbins-finding-freedom-from-familiar
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Epic of Gilgamesh; the philosophy of René Girard; Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Baltimore, Maryland
Books & Reading
Dickens, Charles
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic Poetry
Girard, René
Johns Hopkins University
Literature
Melville, Herman
Mimetic Desire
Moby-Dick
Philosophy
Professors
Teachers & Teaching
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/8/179/Socrates.jpg
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Socrates
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National Humanities Center Fellows
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Any contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
Description
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This collection includes contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
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<p>As a humanist, you collect a lot of Humanities Moments, but the one I wanted to tell you about is one that’s burned vividly into my mind. And it’s one that’s especially formative, perhaps it’s responsible for the fact that I’m a philosophy professor today.</p>
<p>It happened in my first semester of philosophy class in college. It was Dr. Muller’s class, freshman year, first time I’d ever studied philosophy, and one of the first texts we read was Plato’s dialogue, <em>Euthyphro</em>. In this dialogue, Socrates is heading into court where he’s going to be tried for his life. He meets an acquaintance of his named Euthyphro, and Euthyphro is there because he’s prosecuting his father for murder, which is of course shocking for the ancient Greeks. The idea of a son prosecuting a father is impious. It’s completely contrary to the respect owed to parents. But Euthyphro professes that he has a higher responsibility, and he tells Socrates that it’s actually pious to prosecute murderers, whether they’re your parents or not.</p>
<p>Socrates is intrigued by this, and he asks Euthyphro to explain to him what piety is. This is always the catch in a Socratic dialogue—the moment when Socrates gets interested. Euthyphro answers pretty quickly, “Piety is doing as I am doing. That is to say, prosecuting anyone who is guilty of murder, sacrilege, or any similar crime whether he be your father or mother or whoever he may be.” And here comes the moment that absolutely stunned me as an 18-year-old. Socrates responds, “Wait a minute, Euthyphro. You just gave me an example of a pious <em>deed</em>, and that doesn’t help me know what piety is. I want you to explain what fundamentally makes this and all other pious deeds <em>be</em> pious. What do they all have in common?”</p>
<p>This was like a revelation. I’d been going through my entire life using these concepts like justice or piety or beauty or goodness or harm to talk about things. We talk about an unjust pay scale or an unjust law or a beautiful painting or a good course of action. We say, “Don’t do that because it’s harmful.” It never once occurred to me that you could ask about the concepts themselves. It’s like I’d been using these word tools all my life and I never asked where they came from or how they worked or whether they were the right tools for the particular job at hand.</p>
<p>This was just an absolutely life-changing moment. There was this whole new layer of reality opening up that I hadn’t even known was there, a whole new set of things to think about. It really was just exactly this Plato’s Cave moment where you’re watching the shadows on the wall and suddenly you get turned around and you see the puppets and you say, “Oh my goodness, the shadows are the effects of something else that’s been behind me out of sight the whole time and now I can see them!” It just completely changed the way I think about life and how I approach having discussions with people. I mean, there’s no point arguing about whether a new rule is fair or not if you haven’t stopped to investigate first if you’re even both using the same concept of fairness. This attention to the level of the concept is just crucial to living together well as human beings, and this was just my first glimpse of it. There’s so much that’s transformative in this dialogue. I always teach it now to my first-year students.</p>
<p>I also wanted to mention this interesting twist at the end of the dialogue that I think is so important for the humanities. Euthyphro gets impatient with the discussion and he’s embarrassed that his off-the-cuff answers keep falling apart under Socrates’s questioning, and so there’s a sad moment at the end of the dialogue where he cuts Socrates off and says, “We're just going to have to have this discussion another time, Socrates, because I’m in a hurry now and I have to go.” Plato just ends the dialogue on this tragic note, because as the reader, you know that Socrates himself is going to be condemned to death on charges of another kind of impiety—for not believing in the Greek gods—in the very next dialogue, and what Plato is telling us is that this impatience with philosophical reflection can be deadly. The most intelligent people in ancient Greek society are going around using concepts like justice and piety without caring enough to really put the time and effort into thinking those concepts all the way through. People die on account of that shoddy use of concepts.</p>
<p>The tragic ending really stayed with me ever since. We want the quick answer, the quick solution. We get impatient with the slow thinking before we can really experience the results, but if we really want to reap the fruits of the humanities, we have to cherish the slow thinking and make time for that patient, enduring, contemplative, questioning look at reality.</p>
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<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/809871253&color=%2355d7d2&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=false&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=false"></iframe>
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Set On a Path by Socrates
Description
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As a college freshman, Thérèse Cory encountered Plato’s Socratic dialogue <em>Euthyphro</em> for the first time. Reading Socrates’ exhortations for Euthyphro—a man bringing charges of murder against his father—to articulate a clear and universal definition of piety, Cory realized the extent to which many of us take key terms and ideas for granted. The story ignited her belief that we must discuss and understand one another’s conceptual perspectives in order to live harmoniously together. This intellectual commitment set Cory on her path to become a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.
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set-on-a-path-by-socrates
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<a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/meet-the-fellows/therese-scarpelli-cory/">Thérèse Cory</a>, associate professor of philosophy at Notre Dame University
College Students
Communication
Euthyphro
Language
Philosophy
Plato
Professors
Socrates
Teachers & Teaching
Vocation
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/8/180/Madonna.jpg
b0612c4055e06e499df670c75137abda
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Madonna
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National Humanities Center Fellows
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Any contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
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This collection includes contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
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<p>My name is Caroline Jones and I’m a professor of art history at a technical university known as MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’ve really enjoyed my time at the National Humanities Center because it’s given me an opportunity to think about the humanities, which I don’t always get every day at MIT.</p>
<p>I think for me, a really powerful moment in my thinking about the humanities came when I began my teaching career. I was just a lowly TA and we had a course on the books that was essentially a kind of art appreciation class, and people from the West, from America, might have seen this as a bit of a finishing school or something like that. But one of my students, who was not from this background, said, “Okay, I get all this stuff about the Madonna, but what’s that plate behind her head?”</p>
<p>I realized, in a kind of shimmering cascade, that my cultural upbringing had closed off for me some very deep questions in the humanities that could only be answered by history, by a study of religion, by a question of, where <em>does</em> that plate come from behind the Madonna’s head? What is the mandorla? What is the halo? How much of this is coming from the East? What does it bring with it as a kind of iconography? So the humanities, for me, are a dialogue with all that we have taken for granted, and a way of opening that up to renewed inquiry and a kind of wonder.</p>
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<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/809871376&color=%2355d7d2&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=false&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=false"></iframe>
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Madonna’s Mandorla
Description
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While acting as a teaching assistant for a large art appreciation course, Caroline Jones witnessed a student’s curiosity about a painting of the Madonna. Such symbols, so pervasive and recognizable in Western culture, she realized, are not as simple and self-contained as they may seem to some of us. The experience helped her to see that even familiar objects are best considered through multiple frames, and that all parts of the humanities—including art history, religion, and history—are made more robust when put into a dialogue with one another.
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madonnas-mandorla
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<a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/meet-the-fellows/caroline-a-jones/">Caroline A. Jones</a>, professor of art history at MIT
Art History
Cultural Exchange
History
Madonna
Professors
Religion
Symbolism
Teachers & Teaching
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/183/Sugarcane.jpg
2b8dea18e8f4c61eb447aea6f5764d44
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Sugarcane
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Pixabay
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sugarcane
Dublin Core
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
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A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
Text
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Andy Mink
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Caroline Bare, 38, Social Studies teacher
Date
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June 19, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
My source of inspiration came from a lecture on paintings and images of slave society presented at the Barbados National Museum. The painting by Issac Sailmaker entitled "Island of Barbados" visually depicts the transformation of the island's geography due to the creation of sugar plantations in 1694. Sugar not only transformed the physical landscape of this mostly uninhabited land, but also would impact the social, political, and economic institutions that were created as a result. This painting symbolizes the totality of sugar on this small island and sets the stage for the ensuing nickname, "Britain's crowned jewel." One of the reasons I was drawn to this painting for inspiration is due to my own experiences on the island over the last week of learning and exploring. Driving through the different parishes and seeing how the landscape differs in various regions is a stark contrast to this image from 1694 showing mostly port cities and the beginning of European transformation on the interior to create space for large scale sugar farming. When looking at maps from the 18th and 19th centuries, the island of Barbados is transformed even more due to the profits and demand for sugar in a new global economy. This image is a snapshot of an island in transition, but lacks the conflict and division sugar production will create in the future. The profits from sugar will create a hierarchy between plantation owners and those working the fields and mills as slaves. Although this image depicts the beginning of British influence and domination over the island of Barbados, the narrative will continue to evolve as sugar projection reaches an all-time high and the thirst for profit will result in the dehumanization of an entire group of people.
Title
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Transformation of an Island
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transformation-of-an-island
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Isaac Sailmaker
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The painting <em>Island of Barbados</em> by Isaac Sailmaker
Barbados
Colonialism
Exploitation
Island of Barbados
Sailmaker, Isaac
Slavery
Sugar Production
Teachers & Teaching
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http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/184/Windmill_Picture_[back].jpg
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Dublin Core
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
Still Image
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Andy Mink
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Patricia Garvey, 23, Earth Science and Astronomy teacher
Date
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June 2018
Description
An account of the resource
Visiting a sugar mill on the coast of Barbados, I wondered how far humans are willing to go for the everyday resources I take for granted. What are we willing to do to the environment or other human beings for sugar, salt, and electricity? In this image, you see the only wind-powered sugar mill still operational on Barbados from the 17th and 18th centuries. These sugar mills once existed by the dozen across the island of Barbados, acting as the technological backbone of the lucrative sugar industry. I focused in on the backside of the windmill because this is where you can see the reasonably advanced technology behind a brutal enterprise. On the tour, our guide pointed to the long wooden rod and noted that six to eight female slaves would have to lift and move this rod until the windmill was most efficiently moving in the wind. Weighing hundreds of pounds, I wondered if a more technologically advanced mechanism would have removed this burden… and if the development of technology would have eventually eliminated the need for slave labor altogether. But in this moment, I thought of Eli Whitney and his cotton gin. Invented with the hope of reducing the demand for slave labor, the cotton gin only made harvesting cotton more urgent. With sugar as one of the main staples in my American diet, I can only imagine that the demand for sugar has increased in recent years. Though my hope is that there is no place in the world today where the life expectancy of a laborer is only three years like that on these plantations… I do feel the need to consider who bears the burden of the resources that support my life. Does technology reduce the burden or simply shift the burden somewhere else? Did the development of the sugar mill reduce the cruelty of the slave trade or make the task more urgent? How far are we willing to go for our resources in modern society?
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The Burden of Sugar
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the-burden-of-sugar
Barbados
Slavery
Sugar Production
Teachers & Teaching
Technology
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/185/IMG_1306.JPG
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Barbados Statue
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barbados-statue
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
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Andy Mink
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Kristen Fallon, 25, English Teacher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
June 2018
Description
An account of the resource
Before travelling to the George Washington House in Bridgetown, Barbados, I thought what most Americans think about George Washington: he was a strong, moral, and noble leader who is the epitome of what it means to be a patriot and an American. While visiting his former home in Barbados, where he lived for two months in 1751, I realized how important the movement--both voluntary and involuntary--of people to this island shapes the nation’s and region’s history with one of the darkest conceptions of all time.
At the George Washington House, many exhibits and tour excerpts discussed how Washington, nineteen years old at the time, moved to Barbados partly to find a more comfortable living environment for his ailing brother. However, Washington was also looking for a way to rise above his modest status in society. Washington had ambitions of belonging to the social elite and used his time in Barbados to network and learn ways in which he could improve his status socially and financially. While the tour was informative and did well to address Washington’s successes and personal character (the quality of which is often praised in history books and popular culture), the tour and museum both failed to address the issue of slavery and its role during Washington’s time in the island.
Agriculture was a money-making machine in the eighteenth century, and Washington inherited and maintained arable land in both Barbados and Virginia. The result of this was an increase in social and financial standing, the dream he had been working to fulfill. But he did not accomplish this on his own. Washington’s financial growth, his beautiful plantation house, and his rise as a member of the social elite are all directly linked to the enslaved persons who labored over his fields. And Washington was not alone in this, neither in the Colonies or island nations like Barbados. Hundreds of plantations owners across the new world relied on enslaved labor to produce. As a result, millions of enslaved Africans were bought and sold to be overworked, tortured, and killed.
While I was at the George Washington house, I saw a small display about the use of enslaved labor on the plantation. The display’s artifacts consisted mostly of informational readings, but it also had a set of mannequin’s representing an enslaved man and child as well as a display case of chains, shackles, and tools for punishment. By the time I reached this small corner of the exhibit, I had been observing and exploring the property for nearly two hours. This was the first reference I saw that discussed the use of enslaved people on the plantation. Based on other historical records, we know that the plantation economy of the Colonies and Barbados were dependent on slave labor, so I couldn't help but wonder why there was no mention or recognition that this household’s status and legacy is based almost entirely on one of the darkest institutions humanity has ever created.
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George Washington and the Movement of Enslaved Persons to Barbados
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george-washington-and-the-movement-of-enslaved-persons-to-barbados
Barbados
Colonialism
History
Slavery
Teachers & Teaching
Washington, George
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/188/Fishing_Net.jpg
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Fishing Net
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Pixabay
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fishing-net
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
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An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
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Andy Mink
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Frances Coffey, High School Teacher
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6-19-18
Description
An account of the resource
This mid-20th century oil painting, titled “Fishermen Mending Nets” by the artist Charles Poyer, depicts an elderly man repairing fishing nets by hand with tools located in a basket. The young boy watches with intrigue and appears ready to learn. This customary activity is occurring by the beach, imparting a sense of calm and peace to the painting.
As a social studies teacher traveling in Barbados, I was struck by the complicated relationship Barbadians have with their history. One of our tour guides stated that Bardadians “don’t value our built environment and history as much as they should.” School children, she explained, are required to take few history classes. Plantation tour guides also noted the difficulty in discussing race relations and the challenge of presenting the horrors of slavery with the island’s current image as a sunny, carefree tourist destination. In fact, this painting can be viewed as a microcosm for the representation of race on the island. Many emancipated slaves turned to fishing to escape working on sugar cane plantations. Yet the artist Charles Poyer decided not to depict a black man sharing fishing skills with a black boy, but rather a white man and white boy. This painting raises interesting questions about the transmission of knowledge and race on an island dominated by people of African ancestry.
Despite reluctance and challenges in presenting a nuanced narrative of the island’s history, Barbadians still have pride in their country’s culture. Fishing in Barbados is viewed as a sign of self-sufficiency and an integral part of their identity. The man in the painting is not only imparting a specific skill set to the boy, but also sharing values like the importance of thrift and hard work. Today fishing towns like Oistins deck their street with neon images of fish and locals urge tourists to try the national dish of flying fish and cou cou. Their pride in this dish shows their reverence for the island’s African ancestry, as cou cou was a common meal for slaves. Other important places like Independence Arch in Bridgetown feature the flying fish on its pillars. Thus, fish continue to be embedded in the art and cultural landscape of the island, and remains integral to the country’s identity.
Title
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Fish and Place in Barbados
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fish-and-place-in-barbados
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The oil painting <em>Fishermen Mending Nets</em> by Charles Poyer
Barbados
Culture
Fishing
History
Paintings
Poyer, Charles
Race
Slavery
Teachers & Teaching
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/190/barbados_flag.png
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Barbados flag
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barbados-flag
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
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Andy Mink
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Elizabeth Mulcahy, Social Studies Teacher
Date
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June 18, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
Standing on Chamberlain Bridge and looking at Independence Arch, I began reading the Barbadian Pledge. Instantly my brain goes to each school morning when students stand and say the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. Both symbolize a promise of loyalty to a nation represented by a flag, but why do humans feel the need to align to a specific political entity and profess this allegiance to others? I have come to the conclusion that it is a mixture of pride, identity, and competition. Barbados and the United States achieved independence from Great Britain, and the pledge shows the pride in being a separate nation. It was a way for citizens to define themselves different from the previous identity connected to Europe. Even though neither pledge was written or established in the immediate time after independence, both wanted to create an identity that links the people of their nation within a very connected world.
Humans are also innately competitive, and whenever there is a competition one team/nation links themselves to symbols. Both the flag design and pledge of Barbados were even created as part of competitions. Pride and identity represented in the pledge and flag carry over to the numerous international competitions such as the Olympics and the World Cup. The emotion seen at sporting events of the 21st century are intense. Some may see this competition as divisive among people, but I feel the pride for a nation shown through say the pledge or waving a flag as a human trait carried throughout the world. There is disagreement over when to say a pledge or if a person should say the pledge at all, but this belief in choosing an identity to be proud of is one shared by humankind.
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The Pledge of Barbados
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the-pledge-of-barbados
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The Pledge of Barbados
Barbados
Chamberlain Bridge
Citizenship
Colonialism
History
Nationalism
Teachers & Teaching
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/191/Emancipation_Barbados.jpeg
bc3569ce6e9d7d0ad37b7736c9e29288
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Emancipation Act Barbados
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emancipation-act-barbados
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
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An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
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Andy Mink
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Chris Cantone, 24, US History and World History I teacher at Albemarle High School in Albemarle County, Virginia
Date
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June 2018
Description
An account of the resource
“To be honest, I’m glad my family didn’t go to America. We ended slavery 30 years earlier. What were YOU guys thinking?”
Our Bajan tour guide of St. Nicholas Abbey told us this as we walked through the sugarcane plantation house. She chuckled, and we along with her, albeit awkwardly. She was right, too; the day before, our research group got to actually leaf through the Emancipation Act of 1834, the physical document that started the process of freedom in Barbados. THE original document! We all casually crowded around the pages and touched them with are bare hands. Compare that with the Declaration of Independence, which literally had a whole movie made about how impossible it would be to steal that document.
The concepts of freedom and liberation are remarkable, almost overwhelming to think about. As such I, along with many others, anchor these to our own experiences. I interact with freedom and liberation in an uniquely American way; I talk about the First Amendment with my US History students, and we discuss the Emancipation Proclamation as a seminal moment in the American story. However, sometimes this lens leads me to think that freedom itself is uniquely American. When I hear the word freedom, and mind immediately jumps to the Stars and Stripes. This, of course, is ridiculous. We didn’t invent freedom; in fact, we were pretty late to the party.
The communities we grew up in shape our worldview. Often, they give us a nearsightedness with regards to monumental events and processes. There are freedom stories from all over the world; it is our job, as global citizens, to learn and grow from them. Therefore, we can better understand and appreciate how each of our communities’ narratives fits within a far greater, and far richer, story.
Title
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The Emancipation Act of 1834 and our Shared Freedom Story
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the-emancipation-act-of-1834-and-our-shared-freedom-story
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The Emancipation Act of 1834
Barbados
Emancipation Act of 1834 (Barbados)
Emancipation Proclamation (United States)
History
Liberation
Slavery
Teachers & Teaching
U.S. History
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/192/Barbados_Museum.jpg
ef593688f166f9ce2ce7637184f0136e
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Barbados Museum
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barbados-museum
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
Text
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Andy Mink
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John Skelton, 30, Teacher, Virginia
Date
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June 2018
Description
An account of the resource
The Barbados Museum and Historical Society is located in a former military prison. Its original purpose of control through force and containment is clear and obvious when I entered the present-day museum. Cannons flank the entrance, a symbol of calculated and brutal violence. The façade is imposing, an intimidating tall arch way designed not to invite but to deter entrance. However, today it is a place of education, a site of liberation for the thousands of stories of people and events in the island’s past. That past for Barbados is incredibly complex. Built on coldly calculated and horrific brutality of agricultural production and subsequent cultural diffusion, the island today grapples with economic, political, and social successes, challenges, and the myriad of geographic factors that influence their narrative to the present day.
Education is critical to Barbadians history and culture. Education was restricted from enslaved Africans, planters viewing an education as catalyst for rebellion. Upon becoming a sovereign nation, Barbados made a social and political commitment to education. Across the island, the pride and commitment to education is obvious. It is the theme that many social-historians touch on as a key marker for its rise in development relative to other island countries that make up the Caribbean. Barbadian planters feared the liberating force of education, Barbadians themselves intertwined economic and political independence with education, and today, many Barbadians put high value on education’s ability to promote the freedom of job opportunity and prosperity on or outside of the island.
This literal former prison’s repurposing into a historic museum was itself a catalyst to understanding Barbados, but also the challenge of the humanities as people grapple with their own past, present, and the connections between them. As people, we look to past individuals and stories and attempt to reutilize or repurpose them to educate, improve, or respond to contemporary and future challenges. This museum, and its reutilization of the prison as a place of confinement to that of freedom is symbolic of that process. Barbados’ past is brutal and complex and, rather than imprisoning that narrative, we must learn and use those real and human truths to promote a better future.
Title
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The Liberation of Our Past
Identifier
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the-liberation-of-our-past
Architecture
Barbados
Education
Geography
History
Museums
Prisons
Teachers & Teaching
Violence
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/193/MFQ1_112_-_An_Extraordinary_emblematical_flag_-_Bussa_Rebellion_Banner_April_1816.jpg
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Bussa Rebellion Banner
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bussa-rebellion-banner
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
Still Image
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Andrew Mink of the National Humanities Center
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Emily Longenecker, 34, High School Teacher, Virginia
Description
An account of the resource
I visited Barbados on a teacher professional development trip in 2018. My assigned research topic for the trip was Bussa’s 1816 slave rebellion. Within three days in April of that year, the rebellion had spread to most of the southern half of the island.
Slavery in Barbados was addressed in a limited way by tour guides and historians on the island. There were not accounts from the slaves to detail their life experience. During this trip, I viewed the rebellion as evidence that slaves were not satisfied with the conditions of their lives and wanted their freedom. In a roundabout on one of the highways in the country, there stands a statue of Bussa- hands raised, fists clenched, chains broken. However, there is no diary entry from Bussa, just accounts from the British of the importance of putting down the rebellion. We can only make assumptions about Bussa’s objectives, but we are missing his words.
In an account written in a private letter on Tuesday, April 16th, the slaves were described as carrying “an extraordinary emblematic flag.” British sketches of the flag, now housed in the National Archives in London, are the only record of the goals of the slaves. They were striving for the freedoms that had been denied to them. They wanted to marry and have access to the privileges of the planters. But they did not want to overthrow the British Crown. They wanted to be British citizens.
This flag is the voice of Bussa and his followers. Slaves were often kept illiterate in order to limit their access to the tools and ideas to agitate for freedom. In this way, their voices are lost. Without those voices, it is possible for historians and individuals to imagine what slaves would have thought or said. But those imaginations do not allow for the complexity of human thought and experience. We are missing these people and we will never truly know their lives. It is unique to have evidence of what Bussa really thought. It contributes to the recognition and understanding of the humanity of Bussa and his followers.
Title
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"An extraordinary emblematic flag"
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an-extraordinary-emblematic-flag
Barbados
Bussa's Rebellion (1816)
History
Memory
Slavery
Teachers & Teaching
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/195/fordstaircase.jpg
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Saigon Staircase
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
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A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
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contested-territory
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National Humanities Center - seminar Contested Territories of SE Asia
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Dan Boyer, high school principal, Beal City Schools
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07/25/2018
Description
An account of the resource
Sometimes you have to leave a place to understand it better. By travelling to North Carolina, I have come to understand a local resource in a new and different way. The idea of Vietnam as contested territory has long held fascination for me. I grew up at a time when we were trying to digest American involvement in Vietnam and ultimately our failures there. I also have the benefit of being close enough to Gerald R. Ford’s presidential museum to use it as a classroom resource on occasion.
During the course of the seminar, I had the opportunity to share how I have used the staircase from Saigon, which is in the Gerald R. Ford Museum, with my students as a concrete (or in this case iron) reminder of place and time. We looked at the image of our South Vietnamese allies in the famous photograph desperately clutching the railing of the staircase hoping to be evacuated by helicopter before the North Vietnamese army overran their position, sometimes referred to as, “The Last Helicopter Out.” Growing up, this image had been a sign of failure to me, of our nation’s failure to be successful in SE Asia, of a failure to contain communism. But as an adult, I saw it differently and that is what I wanted to share with my students. It was also a symbol of the hopes and fears of the people we sometimes leave behind in the wake of our foreign policy. The moment was emotional for both my students and myself.
While sharing this story at the seminar, a visiting professor (Pierre Asselin) shared that the story is a myth and that the staircase in the photo is from an apartment building and not the embassy. My first reaction to this information was to feel bad because as a teacher, especially one of history, I like to get it right for my students. As I continued to reflect on the new information, I realized that yes, I would share this new information with my students, but it doesn’t change how I feel about the staircase and the message or lesson ensconced in it.
While preparing this description of a significant epiphany in humanities for myself, I found it interesting to find that what had played out in my own mind growing up had been in the thoughts of others. I stumbled across an article by Douglas Brinkley that details an argument between Henry Kissinger and Fred Meijer (a Michigan based grocery chain owner). Kissinger wanted to have the staircase buried in the bowels of the Smithsonian because it was a symbol of American failure, while Meijer felt that it represented more. I will conclude with how President Ford settled the argument in favor of acquiring the staircase for the museum. "To some, this staircase will always be seen as an emblem of military defeat," Ford notes. "For me, however, it symbolizes man's undying desire to be free." (Of ladders and letters: On the anniversary of Saigon's fall, a trove of documents sheds new light on old traumas By Douglas Brinkley April 17, 2000)
Photo Credit - Gerald R. Ford Archives - http://fordlibrarymuseum.tumblr.com/post/117710960935/american-personnel-and-vietnamese-allies-ascended
Title
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Contested Territory: The Saigon Staircase in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum
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the-saigon-staircase
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The Saigon Staircase in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
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http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/196/Ho_Xuan_Huong.gif
cf45d49dbed5ad5e591df9f01390841b
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Hồ Xuân Hương
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ho-xuan-huong
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
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A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
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contested-territory
Text
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Andy Mink
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Lindsey Graham, 27, history teacher
Description
An account of the resource
For teenagers, the world they live in is often described as “normal” and everything else is “weird.” One of my goals as a history teacher is to help my students recognize difference, but also to feel connected to people who lived in a much different place and time than them. Ho Xuan Huong’s poem, “Three Mountain Pass“ provoked in me admiration of her artistic talent, curiosity (“Who is this woman who can write such clearly sexual poems in 18th century Vietnam?”) and a sense that we had a shared experience of love and passion that shortened the distance between us.
“Three Mountain Pass” helped me understand the extremely high value Vietnamese culture places on poetic imagery - such that transgressive poetry could flourish because of its beauty. It also made me think deeply about the space Ho Xuan Huong carved out to express herself (and challenged the notion, propagated by American media, of Vietnamese women as passive objects, rather than educated artists with agency.) I am grateful to John Balaban for helping to bring these poems to me and to an American audience more generally, and that I was able to first feel a deep connection to Vietnam through this poem.
"Three Mountain Pass": https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/three-mountain-pass/
Title
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"Three Mountain Pass" - Connecting to Vietnam
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"Three Mountain Pass" by Hồ Xuân Hương
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three-mountain-pass
Hồ, Xuân Hương
Poetry
Teachers & Teaching
Three Mountain Pass
Vietnam
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/198/E784D031-CBF9-4E1B-9AAF-58C307468D36.jpeg
cc195d55b54f28406f8b1a1e7efd5215
Dublin Core
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Title
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Map of South Vietnam
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
Andy Mink
Dublin Core
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Breanna Holtz, 26, Social Studies teacher in Oregon
Date
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July 25th, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
Over the course of the National Humanities Center Institute on Contested Territory: Southeast Asia 1945-1975 through the National Endowment for the Humanities, I learned about the contributing factors to the definition of territory. For instance; how territory is defined, claimed, argued about, and taken away. Territory is far more than just a physical space that a leader governs and taxes. Territories are full of people from different backgrounds, religions, experiences, and ethnicities. Southeast Asia, and Vietnam in particular, is a place where many local powers and foreign governments have tried to establish their mark and expand their own territory to fulfill their imperialistic agenda.
The map that is shown is a map of South Vietnam and the different ethnic groups that reside within. There are three umbrella ethnicities, with multiple ethnicities within each umbrella. When I first looked at this map, I was fascinated that all of these ethnicities are present in South Vietnam. After closer analysis and further learning about territory, it began to become even stranger to me that a foreign power would have the audacity to try and take when there are so many interests at play. Many colonial powers considered their interests alone without the thought of how they were carving up locations primarily in the Global South. The idea of territory, then, becomes much harder to describe. It also becomes much harder to figure out to whom the territory belongs. The perspective of the people who live in a particular space are frequently at odds with those who come in and try to make the space theirs. My understanding of territory as something that can be fought over and “won” is complicated by the idea that just because an area is titled something or is officially run by a leader, does not mean that the territory belongs to that person or group of people.
Title
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The Truth About Territory
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truth-about-territory
Source
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Map of South Vietnam
Cartography
Geopolitics
Imperialism
Southeast Asia
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/199/mali.jpg
7966c81d1d27047d790944975a9e262c
Dublin Core
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Title
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Front-page news on Muhammad Ali
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
NEH: Contested Territories
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Melissa Barnhouse, 38, exceptional children's teacher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
June 21, 1967
Description
An account of the resource
Muhammad Ali was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1966. Ali did not believe in fighting in the war and he was willing to sacrifice everything based on those principles. “My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” he said. “And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? There are only two kinds of men,” Ali continued, “those who compromise and those who take a stand.” Ali told Pacifica Radio he was “proud to say that I am the first man in the history of all America, athlete and entertainer-wise, who gave up all the white man’s money, looked the white man in the eye, and told him the truth, and stayed with his people." Ali was sentenced to 5 years in jail, fined $10,000, stripped of his title and lost his boxing license for 3 years at the height of his career. In spite of detrimental and pervasive consequences, he sacrificed his way of life to stand strong in his beliefs. The theme of “sacrifice” permeates every aspect of the history of contested territories. All the people involved, no matter what their nationality or culture, made sacrifices related to the contested territory.
Title
A name given to the resource
Sacrifices and the Consequences of Dissent
Identifier
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sacrifice-consequences-of-dissent
Ali, Muhammad
Civil Rights
Conscientious Objection
Human Rights
Radio
Sacrifice
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/200/French_Indochina_post_partition.png
c6268a7744443bc59d2548f17e853b7e
Dublin Core
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French Indochina Post-Partition
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french-indochina-post-partition
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
National Humanities Center Summer Seminar
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Contributor
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Kate Cruze, 35, History Teacher, Greensboro NC
Date
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July 1954
Description
An account of the resource
I misunderstood the Geneva Accords and the reasons behind American involvement in Vietnam. I knew it was in the context of the Cold War but I did not understand why it had to happen and was I to teach a war or a conflict? After Pierre Asselin spoke on the subject and shared a similar map I understood that context was critical and that this was a war for the Vietnamese and a conflict the Americans could not politically shy away from.
The map chosen is significant as it is a Western perspective of a nation with delineations assigned by outsiders. Questions emerged. Where is Vietnam? Who is Vietnam? How could this map possibly tell me the answers.
It was in viewing this map and reflecting on the conversations and lectures from the seminar that I better understand this was a complex situation for a diverse group of people who had to answer difficult questions in the context of the Cold War. Who you claimed to be determined if you were a friend or foe of the United States. If a friend threatened to fall to our enemy, what choice did we have but to act in order to save an ally. As France used the Cold War to gain American support, the North Vietnamese used our own words to defend its independence. It was a time for hard choices, and we made ours: to defend democracy from tyranny of communism.
This moment in history resonated with me because I walked away finally feeling like I understood what various peoples of Vietnam were fighting for and how the United States fit into the narrative.
Title
A name given to the resource
Why Americans in Indochina Wars?
Identifier
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why-americans-in-indochina-wars
History
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/201/Ho_Chi_Minh-Appeal-1930.pdf
e4695d68f146bd0fcd435af4a2a064eb
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ho Chi Minh's "Appeal Made on the Occasion of the Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party"
Identifier
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ho-chi-minh-appeal
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
NHC
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Terry Ashkinos, 8th grade Humanities teacher, CA
Date
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July 24, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
I was selected for a two week institute entitled, Contested Territory, in which we took a deep dive into the multiple understandings and misunderstanding surrounding the Vietnam War (or as the Vietnamese refer to it: The American War). I had a basic understanding of this war in that it was a product of the Cold War. I was taught that the Vietnam War was an avoidable mistake and that it should be a precautionary tale of how not to make that mistake again.
In a lecture given by Pierre Asselin, Professor of History at San Diego State University, I was struck by how my understanding of the Vietnam War, in which the superpowers of the cold war had used Ho Chi Minh and the landscape of Vietnam in a proxy war, was grossly oversimplifying.
In fact, Asselin argued that it was Ho Chi Minh who used Russia, the US and even China to accomplish his real goals: to expel the French, to become an independent nation, to increase civil rights in Vietnam and to produce a strong national, working class led government.
It is Ho Chi Minh who allows the US to train his Viet Minh army to fight the Japanese and then go on to use the same training to fight the French and eventually align with China to fight the US. The communist/nationalist party of Vietnam continually plays both sides of the cold war tensions between the Soviet Union and the US to get aid from both sides and to establish independence. Ho Chi Minh went so far as to model the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence on the US Declaration of Independence at the same time it was meeting with the USSR to align with the world communist struggle and model his government on its principles.
Once Truman declares a policy of containment in regards to communism the Vietnam War is inevitable. No President could survive the political fall out of allowing communism to spread in South East Asia or anywhere else. As a result, small countries become extremely important on the world stage as the US and the USSR engage in a game of RISK. But that game makes the super powers vulnerable. Small countries can now play the US and the USSR against each other to impose power over them. It becomes clear to Ho Chi Minh and others that Vietnam can now threaten to adopt communism unless they gain US support which they can then use to negotiate favor from the USSR. David and Goliath was never about the slingshot; it’s about David manipulating the giant to let down its guard just enough so that he can deliver the kill shot. The United States lost the Vietnam War when it based its foreign policy on ideology. Ho Chi Minh was not a puppet of the cold war, he was an architect.
"You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it."
-Ho Chi Minh
Excerpt from TheDeclaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
"For the people of Vietnam, who were just beginning to recover from five years of ruthless economic exploitation by the Japanese, the end of World War II promised to bring eighty years of French control to a close. As the League for the Independence of Vietnam (Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi), better known as the Viet Minh, Vietnamese nationalists had fought against the Japanese invaders as well as the defeated French colonial authorities. With the support of rich and poor peasants, workers, businessmen, landlords, students, and intellectuals, the Viet Minh (led by Ho Chi Minh) had expanded throughout northern Vietnam where it established new local governments, redistributed some lands, and opened granaries to alleviate the famine. On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh square. The first lines of his speech repeated verbatim the famous second paragraph of America’s 1776 Declaration of Independence.
All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free."
Title
A name given to the resource
It was never about the slingshot
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
never-about-the-slingshot
Colonialism
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
World History
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/202/SplendorandDarknessAcklandArtMuseum.jpg
dc52192e544363c9429c9186c72c1507
Dublin Core
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Title
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Splendor and Darkness, Ackland Art Museum
Dublin Core
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Title
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
At the NEH Summer Seminar Contested Territory
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Michael Miragliuolo, 43, Social Studies Teacher at Green Hope HS in Cary, NC
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 25, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
My moment came at one of the least expected times for me over the past few weeks. To begin, I am not a lover of art. I generally am not a fan of art museums at all. About four years ago I married my wife who was a fine arts major at Penn State University and is currently an art teacher in Wake County, North Carolina. She has tried to convince me of the value of works of art and she has taken me to numerous art museums. I have never been one to get it, though, as I see a painting or sculpture and then move on to the next one.
On Wednesday July 25th, 2018 our NEH Summer Institute (Contested Territory) made a trip to the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina and my group went to the second floor to spend thirty minutes looking at one piece of art from Southeast Asia. This work was by Dinh Q. Le called Untitled #9 from Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness and I could not believe there was nothing else in the room beyond one piece of art. We were asked to bring our chairs up close to the piece. When we were asked to explain what we saw in the work, I was amazed that so many people could see so much and such a variety of things in the work. We switched angles and people then explained the new things they saw from a different perspective. I couldn’t believe it. One work of art could bring so much out of so many different people. The artist in this particular piece was attempting to display some of the horror and emotion associated with the violence in Cambodia in the late 1970’s.
When I spoke with my wife about it that evening she got excited. Without even seeing the piece she tried to explain what the artist may have been attempting to do with colors and what he may have sought by placing the pictures how he did. While I am in no way going to become an art expert, the emotion one work could bring from so many people was a valuable lesson for me and gives me new appreciation for the role art can play in keeping history alive.
Title
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Finding Meaning in Art
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finding-meaning-in-art
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<em>Untitled #9 from Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness</em> by Dinh Q. Lê
Ackland Museum of Art
Art
Art Museums
Cambodia
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Le, Dinh Q.
Paintings
Teachers & Teaching
Untitled #9 from Cambodia: Splendor and Darkness
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/204/Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail_network_map.jpg
78256d80ccf1e7e31d03fd801b1d5319
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Ho Chi Minh Trail network
Source
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Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail_network_map.jpg
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/204/Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail-sDnC8ANpwLk_x264.mp3
bf1fa21c67c479b71c87aba98995bb9a
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
I discovered Humanities Moments while attending an institute at the National Humanities Center
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Alex Christman, 41, history teacher in Durham North Carolina
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 2018
Description
An account of the resource
When I was young my father, knowing of my interest in music and war, gave me a book entitled "Singing the Vietnam Blues: Songs of the Air Force in Southeast Asia." Actually, he had it hidden so well he lost it and gave it to me years after he intended. I ended up losing it again while in college before reading it, a missed opportunity I’ve always regretted.
Later on in life, I discovered a folk song through a project at Buffalo State University called Vietnam Veterans Oral History and Folklore Project. I found the song instantly haunting. Recalling my father’s gift, I have always yearned to share it with my father to get his opinion. Unfortunately he died before I could. The song is titled “Ho Chi Minh Trail,” although the tune is identical to the old country song “Billy the Kid” (this adds extra layers of meaning if you know the lyrics). The song describes the point of view of an American pilot trying to stop North Vietnamese trucks on the trail while facing anti-aircraft defenses and his own fears.
While participating in the National Humanities Institute on Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, I have gained an appreciation for the layers within the song and parallels to Vietnamese culture. Obviously the Trail was a “contested territory,” with the North Vietnamese on the ground and Americans in the air above. This difference of space itself is a reflection of the technological and cultural divide between the two sides. The author describes a pilot struggling in the dark while fighting to stay in the air. This recalls to me American administrations creating policy, struggling with their ignorance of Southeast Asia, while fighting to keep South Vietnam afloat. This song also represents a contested cultural territory in America. Folk songs were typically used by American protesters in the 1950s and 60s, but here the form is used to describe a military experience. The last verse of the song, about an overconfident youth, seems a fitting metaphor for America as a whole in the mid-20th Century. Finally, this song brings to mind the Vietnamese Ca Dao poetry, or folk poetry used by the Vietnamese peasants to describe and give meaning to their lives. This song is an American equivalent of Ca Dao; it would have been sung by and to other American pilots before they met their destiny in the contested space above the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The song makes me think of lost opportunities for communication between people divided by space, technology, politics, and culture, just as my opportunity to play this song for my father was lost by his death. Listening to this song, I am haunted by that realization of loss. As we hurt each other, we all lose opportunities to understand. We lose our youth, we lose our fathers, and we lose ourselves.
“Ho Chi Minh Trail” by Toby Hughes
Come along, boys, and I'll tell you a tale,
Of the pilots who fly on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Of Covey and Moonbeam and Nimrod you've heard,
Of Hobo and Spad and of old Yellow Bird.
The trucks load in Hanoi and Haiphong by day,
In singles and convoys they start on their way.
South by southwest in an unending stream,
Reaching the border at day's fading gleam.
They stop at Mu Gia or at Ban Karai.
And wait for the last of the daylight to die.
Under cover of night through the pass they set sail,
Out on the roads of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
As they roll on through darkness, not stopping to rest,
Miles away are the pilots whose skills they will test.
Who'll soon face the darkness, the karst, and the guns,
In the grim cat and mouse game that no one's yet won.
When you fly on the Trail through the dark and the haze
It's a thing you'll remember the rest of your days.
A nightmare of vertigo, mountains, and flak,
And the cold wind of Death breathing soft at your back.
But the trucks must be stopped, and it's all up to you,
So you fly here each night to this grim rendezvous.
Where your whole world's confined to the light of the flare,
And you fight for your life just to stay in the air.
For there's many a man who there met his fate,
On the dark roads of Hell, where the grim reaper waits.
Where a man must learn quickly the tricks of his trade,
Or die in the dark for mistakes that he's made.
And there's many a lad in the flush of his youth,
Who's still yet to meet with his moment of truth.
With wings on his chest and the world by the tail,
He'll grow up fast on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDnC8ANpwLk
Title
A name given to the resource
Flying Over the Ho Chi Minh Trail
Source
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"Ho Chi Minh Trail" by Toby Hughes
Identifier
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flying-over-ho-chi-minh-trail
Ca Dao (Vietnamese Folk Poetry)
Fathers & Sons
Folk Music
Ho Chi Minh Trail
Hughes, Toby
Oral History
Singing the Vietnam Blues: Songs of the Air Force in Southeast Asia
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam Veterans Oral History and Folklore Project
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/205/800px-South_Vietnam_-_The_final_days_1975.jpg
df4593d76ff02ea610d244f1dd7840c8
Dublin Core
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Title
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South Vietnam, 1975
Source
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Wikimedia Commons, https://sl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slika:South_Vietnam_-_The_final_days_1975.jpg
Dublin Core
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Title
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
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contested-territory
Text
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at the National Humanities Center
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Spencer Swindler, 44, social studies teacher Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
Date
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Friday, July 29, 2018 group presentations of ESRI storymaps
Description
An account of the resource
5 years ago the AP Human Geography teacher at my former high school announced that she would be moving to Rhode Island. She informed me that I would be taking over the course. I fell in love with the material and am constantly looking for ways to make geography more meaningful for students. Every year I feel I get a little better at getting young scholars to think about the five themes of geography: absolute and relative location, place, human/environmental interactions, regions, and movement. Last Friday I had an experience that will forever change to way I teach.
On the second day of the Contested Territory seminar Chris Bunin quickly and effectively taught us how to use ArcGIS software. Groups received an assignment that was due on the first Friday. Our instructions were to focus on one of the five themes of geography and create an ESRI story map based on the territory of SE Asia. Our group chose to focus on bombing in Southeast Asia during the Vietnamese/American War.
Working with my group on the assignment created an a-ha moment. Our topic was unexploded ordnance from the bombing of SE Asia. We all were thinking about human-environment interaction as we scoured the internet looking for data, articles, and images. We worked on how to use the software. We had brainstorming sessions to storyboard our presentation. This is exactly what I want my AP Human Geography and AP Capstone Research students to do.
The biggest a-ha moment came when the other groups presented. I looked at my fellow participants and saw the wonder as we viewed the aesthetically beautiful story maps. I kept thinking, “We collectively created these and they are awesome.” We were not only proud but also amazed at the power of the assignment. We learned from embedded videos, recorded first person accounts, biographies, and multiple maps where the information had probably never been conceptualized in that particular way.
My students will have a-ha moments when they learn how to GIS. It will take many hours for me to be able to do what Chris Bunin did for us. This is an investment of time that I am ready and willing to make.
Title
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Forever Maps
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forever-maps
Source
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Storymaps
Cartography
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Geography
Teachers & Teaching
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/206/muhammad-ali-572571_1280.jpg
1a4211ebeefde72417f2b1726909cbdf
Dublin Core
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Muhammad Ali
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Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/en/muhammad-ali-professional-boxer-572571/
Dublin Core
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Title
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
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NEH Seminar
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Kimberly Perry-Sanderlin, AIG Specialist- Durham Public Schools (NC)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
7/23/18 NEH Seminar- William Sturkey Session
Description
An account of the resource
The most powerful Humanities Moments for me occurred during William Sturkey’s NEH session entitled “Contested Patriotisms: Dissent and Nationalism on the US Homefront.” One thing that stuck with me was Sturkey’s assertion that “dissention always has consequences.” He then gave Muhammad Ali as an example of how anti-war stance severely affected him on both a personal and professional level.
As someone who was not born during this era- coupled with the fact that I’ve had some pretty crappy history teachers- I have to admit that my initial imagery of Muhammad Ali was centralized around him as the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of all time)- a positive reference to his unquestionable domination within the boxing ring, and one that represents the perception of him towards that latter years of his life. (I actually have a Sonny Liston signed copy of the iconic image referenced with this moment hanging in my guest room.) Though I was familiar with Ali’s refusal to participate in the war, I was not familiar with the extent at which he was forced into vocalizing his views, and the unpleasant consequences of such a stance by a well-known black man in the 1960s.
Immediately I was interested in further research on dissention surrounding the Vietnam War. But not just from the lens of larger-than-life individuals such Muhammad Ali, but of lesser-known individuals that dissented against the war and how they were affected. Furthermore, I also became intrigued to learn how status effected one’s involvement in the war.
One thing I more clearly realized as a result of this session was the extent to which our textbooks focus heavily on the political rhyme or reason of war, and so little on the human impact. This session helped to connect historical puzzle pieces for me that had been left disconnected by my own fragmented historical context. As an educator, it has motivated me to ensure that I focus on the human aspects of any historical events or current issues that I present to my students.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Consequences of War Dissension
Identifier
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consequence-war-dissension
Ali, Muhammad
Conscientious Objection
Dissension
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/208/vietnam_war_memorial.jpg
9ccbb54be29b205c5c9b24bfb2d6059d
Dublin Core
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Vietnam War Memorial
Identifier
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vietnam-war-memorial
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
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National Humanities Center Webinar
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Laura Wakefield, History Educator
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 24, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
The idea of “contested territories”, which we have wrestled with this week, can apply to how the war is remembered and commemorated too. My humanities moment came in a group discussion this week with Quynh, a Vietnamese professor. We were discussing the idea of the Vietnam War Memorial as a teaching tool and I asked her if there was a similar monument in Vietnam. She immediately said yes, there is: Sơn Mỹ. She showed me a picture of a monument that I assumed had the names of Vietnamese soldiers until she handed me a piece of paper with the words “Mỹ Lai Massacre”. I realized this monument contained the names of more than 500 civilians killed by U.S. soldiers in the Sơn Mỹ district in 1968. At first, in my mind, I rejected the idea that this monument could be like the Vietnam War Memorial displaying the names of all the Americans killed in the war. I didn’t want to equate a Vietnamese monument to Mỹ Lai, one of the worst events in the war, with the Wall. But I came to understand that in some ways the monuments are similar. The war made victims of both sides.
Title
A name given to the resource
Perspectives on Commemorating the Vietnam War
Identifier
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perspectives-on-commemorating-the-vietnam-war
Memory
My Lai Massacre, Vietnam, 1968
Statues
Teachers & Teaching
U.S. History
Vietnam
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
Violence
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/209/Humanities_Moment_Rambo.jpg
22773fcab21c23fc30f56577cf832929
Dublin Core
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Title
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Rambo
Identifier
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rambo
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
National Humanities Center
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Contributor
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Brittanee C. Rolle, 28, Teacher
Description
An account of the resource
It was the beginning of another morning session for Contested Territory and I was still circulating ideas in my mind about connections between Vietnam and the South Side of Chicago. While perusing my notebook to find a clean page, our speaker for the session was introduced and we all settled in for the lecture. I looked up to hear a tall bearded white man with an unrecognizable accent. I’m looking closely at his mouth to help me decipher his words when I make out Rambo. Rambo was his entry point into the study of Vietnam and the Vietnam War. Immediately, my reaction is visceral and I tensed up. Images of what seems to be senseless violence on brown bodies flash before me and his voice goes mute in my head. The phrase senseless violence repeats in my mind until I remember where I’ve heard it used before. Senseless violence is the phrase that trivializes gang violence which leads to very little investigation of homicides and allows it to persist on the South and West Side of Chicago. I decided Contested Territory for my students would be a lesson challenging them to see gang violence as more than just violence, but intimate communities that are fighting over land, economic safety and respect, similar to the motivation for many wars in Vietnam. Contested Territory is a way that students could learn about a people and a history far from us while feeling just how close those realities are to their neighborhood.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Senselessness of Rambo and Other Things
Identifier
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the-senselessness-of-rambo-and-other-things
Chicago, Illinois
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam
Violence
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/210/Eisenhower_Ngo_Dinh_Diem.jpg
34f241863c9fda67272b4ce86e046856
Dublin Core
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Title
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Presidential Meeting
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presidential-meeting
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
NEH Seminar on Contested Territory at the National Humanities Center
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Bryan Boucher, 39, Teacher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 24, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
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 the contested territory of Southeast Asia, and embracing that chaotic feeling is a main reason why I love the humanities.
There is much to teach about in this photo. Why would Eisenhower personally greet Diem at the airport, something he only did on one other occasion (and is almost never done by sitting U.S. presidents for heads of state)? Why is the year 1957 important? What does the United States think of Vietnam at this time? How is this photo potentially problematic? There are contrasts on many levels when dissecting this photo, and it can launch exploration in so many directions.
The photo encapsulates a conversation that I had with Vietnam historian Pierre Asselin after a talk he presented to our NEH summer seminar at the National Humanities Center. While we were discussing the challenges of teaching the Cold War to students, Professor Asselin noted, “if you study the Cold War correctly, you should be more confused as you go along, and that’s a great feeling!” This last line resonated with me, and reiterated my belief that it is important for students to understand different perspectives, sometimes without finding an answer to the question that was posed, but understanding the complexity and nuance of that question. This process is where real learning takes place, and it is important to teach students to embrace this chaos (and even to seek it out) in their own learning. Challenging our initial impressions of a source and digging deeper speaks to the lifelong value of the humanities.
Title
A name given to the resource
Embracing the Complexity and Chaos of the Humanities Through a Photo
Identifier
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embracing-the-complexity-and-chaos-of-the-humanities-through-a-photo
Diplomacy
History
Photography
Presidents of the United States
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/211/Vietnam_Declaration.jpg
1a8eb34afd33432489dcbfb9a2016850
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Vietnamese Declaration of Independence
Identifier
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vietnamese-declaration-of-independence
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
NEH Summer Teachers Institute
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Dorothy Morris-Ross, 71, High School Teacher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
7/18/2018
Description
An account of the resource
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. Furthermore to find out that Ho actually used the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Men as resources was extremely edifying. I found it interesting that he opened with a direct quote from the Declaration of Independence and went on to quote from the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
His conversation is to the American and French authorities. He questions them on their hypocrisy throughout the document based on the American and French struggles for independence. This is one of the documents that I plan to share with my students.
Title
A name given to the resource
Vietnamese Declaration of Independence
Identifier
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vietnamese-declaration-of-independence
Source
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The Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
Colonialism
Hồ Chí Minh
Teachers & Teaching
The Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
Vietnam
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/212/Yasukuni.jpg
74b7570812e79cf10049321b99937818
Dublin Core
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Yasukuni
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yasukuni
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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The National Humanities Center
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Breann Johnston, Middle School Teacher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 26th, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
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 when we connect with people who have very different perspectives than our own, and we are willing to see things through their eyes. It does not mean that will always lead us to the same conclusion or change our own perspective in any way.
I use the phrase, “life is all about perspective” all the time, but how much the concept of contested territory is related to perspective did not really hit me until Morgan Pitelka was presenting his seminar, “Memory and Commemoration.” He discussed the Yūshūkan War/ Military Museum in Tokyo, Japan and explained that the Japanese people say the museum is a place of memorial for the lost soldiers, while others see it as a place to glorify Japan’s violent military past. There were other strong examples of contested perspectives throughout my time here in North Carolina, but that moment brought it all together for me.
Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Perspective
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-perspective
Connection
History
Museums
Teachers & Teaching
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/214/GOSouth.jpg
215d65579299bcbba38fd2e084831b25
Dublin Core
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Title
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Go South
Identifier
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go-south
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
contested-territory
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Referrer
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
Teacher Summer Seminar at the National Center for the Humanities
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Brendon, 30, High School U.S. History Teacher, from Camden, Delaware
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 24th, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
“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 with the help of some equally impressive university scholars I came to understand how of part of Southeast Asia known today as Vietnam has a long history as a contested place. I want to now re-evaluate the when in which I teach about Vietnam to my future classes. I selected this image because for me it conveyed what a long process Vietnam went through in order to exist presently. It is a place to me as a teacher that tells a much larger story than simply the American war in Vietnam. It’s a story of process from colonization to revolution that spans many centuries and has several links to different places and peoples. In order to contextualize Vietnam as more than just the site where Americans were sent from 1954-1975 we need to tell the more complicated story of the history of the place, and that’s why I selected this image as my humanities moment.
It’s a great primary source to summarize the different approach that I gained from my time in that seminar. It’s a propaganda poster from “Operation Freedom” which was done by the United States Information Agency in order to convince people from North Vietnam to escape communism by moving below the 17th parallel. Everything about this image to me is a reminder of how contested this land had been. The words themselves, all in the style of the Vietnamese Latin alphabet, can tell a remarkable story of how this country emerged in the cross-currents of South East Asia. The communist flag, the images of a destroyed yet oppressive North, the green, serene wet rice agriculture of the South offer students a lot to unpack. Why was the country divided? When was this produced? What role did the United States have in Vietnam and why would they produce this? Do you think this changed people’s minds? All questions that need to be answered by examining the history of Vietnamese and not of the colonial actors.
The words are also a powerful message telling the viewer in Vietnamese: “Go to the SOUTH to avoid COMMUNISM” and that “The NAM VIỆT compatriots are waiting to welcome their Bắc Việt compatriots with open arms.” What assumptions did the American propaganda designers make? What is different about the country in the North versus the South? There is so much to explore about Vietnam itself through this image rather than doing a unit of the exclusively the American government or military, and forces my students, as well as myself to confront a much different history of Vietnam by including an understanding of how Vietnam was not just something acted on by outsiders, but how it was in itself, a place composed of a number of different ethnicities, religions as people in order to teach a more complete history in my curriculum of how Americans ended up there.
Source: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6949142
Title
A name given to the resource
The Long History of Contested Freedom in Vietnam
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
the-long-history-of-contested-freedom-in-vietnam
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
A propaganda poster from “Operation Freedom” which was done by the United States Information Agency
Colonialism
Communism
Propaganda
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam
Vietnam War (1961-1975)