"Dublin Core:Title","Dublin Core:Subject","Dublin Core:Description","Dublin Core:Creator","Dublin Core:Source","Dublin Core:Publisher","Dublin Core:Date","Dublin Core:Contributor","Dublin Core:Rights","Dublin Core:Relation","Dublin Core:Format","Dublin Core:Language","Dublin Core:Type","Dublin Core:Identifier","Dublin Core:Coverage","Item Type Metadata:Text","Item Type Metadata:Interviewer","Item Type Metadata:Interviewee","Item Type Metadata:Location","Item Type Metadata:Transcription","Item Type Metadata:Local URL","Item Type Metadata:Original Format","Item Type Metadata:Physical Dimensions","Item Type Metadata:Duration","Item Type Metadata:Compression","Item Type Metadata:Producer","Item Type Metadata:Director","Item Type Metadata:Bit Rate/Frequency","Item Type Metadata:Time Summary","Item Type Metadata:Email Body","Item Type Metadata:Subject Line","Item Type Metadata:From","Item Type Metadata:To","Item Type Metadata:CC","Item Type Metadata:BCC","Item Type Metadata:Number of Attachments","Item Type Metadata:Standards","Item Type Metadata:Objectives","Item Type Metadata:Materials","Item Type Metadata:Lesson Plan Text","Item Type Metadata:URL","Item Type Metadata:Event Type","Item Type Metadata:Participants","Item Type Metadata:Birth Date","Item Type Metadata:Birthplace","Item Type Metadata:Death Date","Item Type Metadata:Occupation","Item Type Metadata:Biographical Text","Item Type Metadata:Bibliography","Item Type Metadata:Player","Item Type Metadata:Imported Thumbnail","Item Type Metadata:Referrer",tags,file,itemType,collection,public,featured "P.O.W. Poetry in Code","Borling’s poetry, composed in the most oppressive of conditions, demonstrates how the arts and humanities are essential to the human spirit and give evidence to the shared human impulse to make sense of our lives in words and through creative expression.","
In the Hanoi Hilton, the place where the North Vietnamese imprisoned and often tortured American captives during the Vietnam War, the US prisoners used a tapping code to communicate with one another. But they didn’t just send conversational messages, they tapped out poetry, reciting from memory some of the favorites they remembered from school and composing new poems to lift their spirits. Their captors would not allow them to speak to one another. But they didn’t notice the tapping — or didn’t understand what it was about.
Here’s the code they used. It breaks the alphabet into five lines, each with five letters in it. So any letter (forget about K) can be conveyed through two sets of taps. A is 1, 1; Z is 5, 5 (K is either C or 2, 6). The code’s five lines are:
Captain John Borling was one of those captives, and the poems he composed as a P.O.W. were shared and memorized by his fellow prisoners. And, after Borling returned to the States after the war, his poems were pubished in Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton.
Borling’s poetry, composed in the most oppressive of conditions, demonstrates how the arts and humanities are essential to the human spirit and give evidence to the shared human impulse to make sense of our lives in words and through creative expression.
For centuries philosophers like Glenn Gray have sought ways to make sense of the world and better understand our place in it — from the order of the cosmos to the nature of beauty to the chaos and brutality of war. And, for just as many centuries they have inspired, intrigued, and challenged us to consider new ideas, and offered perspectives on difficult issues to help us navigate our lives and set the course of civilizations.
As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, William Adams has helped oversee the roll-out of an agency-wide initiative Standing Together: The Humanities and the Experience of War which seeks to use the humanities to help Americans understand the experiences of service members as they return to civilian life.
","National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman William “Bro” Adams shares how philosophy professor and World War II veteran Glenn Gray and his book The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle helped him come to terms with his own experiences in Vietnam.
For centuries philosophers like Gray have sought ways to make sense of the world and better understand our place in it—from the order of the cosmos to the nature of beauty to the chaos and brutality of war. And, for just as many centuries they have inspired, intrigued, and challenged us to consider new ideas, and offered perspectives on difficult issues to help us navigate our lives and set the course of civilizations.
As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, William Adams has helped oversee the rollout of an agency-wide initiative, Standing Together: The Humanities and the Experience of War, which seeks to use the humanities to help Americans understand the experiences of service members as they return to civilian life.
",,"The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle by Glenn Gray",,,"William “Bro” Adams, Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities",,,,,,bro-adams-experience-of-war,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Books & Reading,College Students,Colorado College,Colorado Springs, Colorado,Gray, Jesse Glen,Military Personnel,Philosophy,The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle,Veterans,Vietnam War (1961-1975),War,World War II (1939-1945)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/37/glenn-gray-warriors-cover.jpg,"Moving Image",,1,0 "Contested Territory: The Saigon Staircase in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum",," 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",,"The Saigon Staircase in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum",,07/25/2018,"Dan Boyer, high school principal, Beal City Schools",,,,,,the-saigon-staircase,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"National Humanities Center - seminar Contested Territories of SE Asia","Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum,Grand Rapids, Michigan,Teachers & Teaching,Vietnam War (1961-1975)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/195/fordstaircase.jpg,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "Sacrifices and the Consequences of Dissent",,"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. ",,,,"June 21, 1967","Melissa Barnhouse, 38, exceptional children's teacher",,,,,,sacrifice-consequences-of-dissent,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"NEH: Contested Territories","Ali, Muhammad,Civil Rights,Conscientious Objection,Human Rights,Radio,Sacrifice,Teachers & Teaching,Vietnam War (1961-1975)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/199/mali.jpg,"Still Image","Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "Why Americans in Indochina Wars?",,"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. ",,,,"July 1954","Kate Cruze, 35, History Teacher, Greensboro NC",,,,,,why-americans-in-indochina-wars,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"National Humanities Center Summer Seminar","History,Teachers & Teaching,Vietnam,Vietnam War (1961-1975)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/200/French_Indochina_post_partition.png,"Still Image","Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "It was never about the slingshot",,"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."" ",,,,"July 24, 2018","Terry Ashkinos, 8th grade Humanities teacher, CA",,,,,,never-about-the-slingshot,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,NHC,"Colonialism,Teachers & Teaching,Vietnam War (1961-1975),World History",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/201/Ho_Chi_Minh-Appeal-1930.pdf,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "Flying Over the Ho Chi Minh Trail",,"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 ",,"""Ho Chi Minh Trail"" by Toby Hughes",,"July 2018","Alex Christman, 41, history teacher in Durham North Carolina",,,,,,flying-over-ho-chi-minh-trail,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"I discovered Humanities Moments while attending an institute at the National Humanities Center","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/13/204/Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail_network_map.jpg,http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/204/Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail-sDnC8ANpwLk_x264.mp3",Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "The Consequences of War Dissension ",,"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. ",,,,"7/23/18 NEH Seminar- William Sturkey Session ","Kimberly Perry-Sanderlin, AIG Specialist- Durham Public Schools (NC) ",,,,,,consequence-war-dissension,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"NEH Seminar ","Ali, Muhammad,Conscientious Objection,Dissension,Teachers & Teaching,Vietnam War (1961-1975)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/206/muhammad-ali-572571_1280.jpg,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "Perspectives on Commemorating the Vietnam War",,"“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. ",,,,"July 24, 2018","Laura Wakefield, History Educator",,,,,,perspectives-on-commemorating-the-vietnam-war,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"National Humanities Center Webinar","Memory,My Lai Massacre, Vietnam, 1968,Statues,Teachers & Teaching,U.S. History,Vietnam,Vietnam War (1961-1975),Violence",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/208/vietnam_war_memorial.jpg,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "Discovering Contested Territory Through Vietnamese Folk Poetry",,"Until this summer institute, I had never heard of the Vietnamese folk poetry known as ca dao. To be honest, I had never even thought of Vietnamese people having a poetic tradition at all. I, like so many other Americans, had relegated Vietnam to an inert location on a map or a tidy historical category. I could barely conceive of a Vietnam beyond the context of American military intervention. Even as we learned about the legacies of European colonialism in the initial seminars, I still saw Vietnam as an almost passive landscape trodden over by successive waves of foreign invaders. In effect, I had made Vietnam a victim in its own story. That changed for me when I heard professor and poet John Balaban talk about his experience collecting and publishing for the first time the oral poetry of Vietnamese farmers. Balaban spoke of an ancient people, full of history, full of passion, and full of pride, inundated by the monsoons that swept away the architectural vestiges of power that we in the “West” have come to rely on so heavily for our historical identity. What was left was a long, beautiful tradition of oral history preserved in the daily life of simple farmers. As Balaban eloquently writes in Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry, poetry flourished “in villages where the lone singer can hear his or her voice against the drone of crickets, the slap of water, or the rustling of banana leaves in the wind (p. 2). This line jolted me out of my facile characterization of Vietnam and its people. Long before the French cast their colonizing net over the people of Vietnam, long before the Americans stumbled into their disastrous war, long before there even was a place called Vietnam, a lone singer could hear her voice “against the drone of crickets, the slap of water, or the rustling of banana leaves in the wind.” The theme of our institute was “Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia.” At first glance, I assumed that we would be discussing America’s involvement in the so-called Vietnam War of the twentieth century; after two weeks of intense study, I have realized that I fundamentally misread the title of this institute. To study contested territory is not to examine how America and the Viet Cong fought bitterly over this hill or that, but rather to place America in the context of an ancient regional story that is crowded with diversity and life. “America’s Role in Southeast Asia” says nothing of dominance or destiny – it was my enculturation as an American that read into it such a teleological narrative. Contested territory, like so much else, starts, and perhaps ends, in the mind.",,"Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry by John Balaban",,"Wednesday, July 18th, 2018","Kevin Shuford",,,,,,discovering-contested-territory-through-vietnamese-folk-poetry,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"The National Humanities Center","Colonialism,History,Oral Tradition,Poetry,Vietnam,Vietnam War (1961-1975)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/213/the-mother-1505000_960_720.jpg,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "The Long History of Contested Freedom in Vietnam",,"“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 ",,"A propaganda poster from “Operation Freedom” which was done by the United States Information Agency",,"July 24th, 2018","Brendon, 30, High School U.S. History Teacher, from Camden, Delaware",,,,,,the-long-history-of-contested-freedom-in-vietnam,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Teacher Summer Seminar at the National Center for the Humanities","Colonialism,Communism,Propaganda,Teachers & Teaching,Vietnam,Vietnam War (1961-1975)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/214/GOSouth.jpg,"Still Image","Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "You Cannot Copy That Map",,"In a lecture on the lived experiences of the local peoples of the area surrounding Dien Bien Phu in Northwest Vietnam, Dr. Christian C. Lentz, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Chapel Hill, shared this map of the Northwest Region of Vietnam and a short anecdote about why this map is of particular importance. He was in the middle of doing research in Hanoi at the North Vietnam Archives Center #3, and faced opposition when he attempted to make copies of many of the maps dating to the French colonial era in Vietnam, whether they be from the French or a Vietnamese production. This map alone Dr. Lentz was allowed to reproduce. This map represents for me the numerous layers that the themes of “contested” and “territory” manifest in Southeast Asia in this time period. This seemingly little tidbit that he shared in the midst of his lecture is what really stuck with me, and cemented my understanding of the conflict in Southeast Asia. The “contest” for Vietnam extends much further past the initial creation of this map in 1952. The idea that a visiting scholar such as Dr. Lentz was strictly forbidden to copy any maps other than this one speaks to how hotly contested the memory of the Vietnam War is still today. As Dr. Lentz told the story, I created a mental image of a Vietnamese archival official standing over Dr. Lentz’ shoulder, closely monitoring what the American scholar copied. How do we remember this conflict? From which perspective? Controlling what can and cannot be recreated is an attempt to steer the narrative, which is very much still being written. Dr. Lentz’ story on the “Black River Region after Northwest Campaign (Oct-Dec 1952)” map simplified for me all the complexities that contributed to the warfare in Southeast Asia into a single map, a visual representation of a territory that meant so many different things to so many different actors, each pulled into a conflict that continues to this day to be contested. I can only hope through continued scholarship, communication, and openness, that one day, the archival official will instead say, “Yes, you can copy that map.” ",,,,"July 2018 - NEH Summer Institute","Maggie Childress, 24, Teacher, Wake County, North Carolina",,,,,,you-cannot-copy-that-map,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"NEH Summer Teachers Institute","Archives,Cartography,Censorship,Research,Teachers & Teaching,Vietnam,Vietnam War (1961-1975)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/216/NW_Vietnam_Region.JPG,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "Violent Legacy Continued",,"My moment was a culmination of two. The first was the image or video taken from Muhammad Ali’s comments regarding the Vietnam War. I have played this video many times in class to highlight the conflicting viewpoints and social implications of the Vietnam War. Considering the backlash experienced by Ali followed by his most recent transformation into an iconic symbol of defiance, I and others have used this video mainly to highlight the racial component of sending African Americans to fight wars in foreign countries despite them not being treat equally in America. And as a black man, the most important moment in the video was previously when he says that no Vietcong had ever called him a nigger and that they want him to go fight for them, but they won’t fight for him, Ali, at home. But after watching the video early in the course and creating the map on unexploded ordinance in Laos, my ah hah moment came from connecting Ali’s comments regarding the people in Vietnam to the unexploded ordinance that continues to take the lives of many in Southeast Asia today. In fact, before he speaks on the racial aspects of American society, he talks about the killing of poor, brown, people in a country that has done nothing wrong towards him or any American for that fact. The picture above of the unexploded ordinances that continue to kill children living in Southeast Asia today is testimony to how the legacy of contested territory continues to dramatically influence the lives many in these countries today in a violent way",,,,,"Tony Noland, 44, Language Arts/Social Studies Teacher",,,,,,violent-legacy-continued,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Andy Mink","Ali, Muhammed,Civil Rights,Human Rights,Intersectionality,Southeast Asia,Teachers & Teaching,Unexploded Ordnance,Vietnam,Vietnam War (1961-1975)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/217/Muhammad_Ali_1966.jpg,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0