"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
"Transformation of an Island",,"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.","Isaac Sailmaker","The painting Island of Barbados by Isaac Sailmaker",,"June 19, 2018","Caroline Bare, 38, Social Studies teacher ",,,,,,transformation-of-an-island,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Andy Mink","Barbados,Colonialism,Exploitation,Island of Barbados,Sailmaker, Isaac,Slavery,Sugar Production,Teachers & Teaching",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/183/Sugarcane.jpg,Text,"Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute",1,0
"Bite Me!- A Florida Humanities Moment",,"People frequently talk about being haunted. Usually by spirits, both by the friendly Casper types and the decidedly less friendly Poltergeist types. Sometimes people are haunted by bad decisions. This is a spectrum too. Some must repeatedly face the time we developed a temporary and acute stutter during an eighth-grade presentation. While others face a scarier specter born of a truly terrible decision, like buying a monitor lizard as a pet. Perhaps one of the most pervasive and long-lasting hauntings of all is that of our hometowns. We swear that we’ll leave it forever. Pack our bags and only talk about home to family and in the occasional childhood anecdote while we live somewhere exciting and exotic. This attitude was especially pandemic to my hometown of Orlando, FL.
You see, Florida is often presented as an exciting place for people to visit. And they do, by the millions. Everyone eventually comes to Florida, at least for a while. To quote Jerry Seinfeld: “My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.”
To offer a few examples of this phenomenon: The spiritualists founded the town of Cassadaga, FL (which still has a major spiritualist camp). Jack Kerouac bought a house in Orlando to quietly read and write. Laura Ingles Wilder briefly came to the state for her health. Ernest Hemingway, on the other hand, famously came to stay. He went so far as to buy a house and began a long line of six-toed cats. The cousins of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (grandchildren of Alexander II) came to South Florida after the Revolution. One even became the three-time mayor of Palm Beach. Florida is a holiday and a safe house. It is where people come to escape—they escape the grind of daily life, illness, political prosecution, revolutions, icy winters, writer’s block, and sometimes even the law.
In these imaginings, Florida then is understood as a land where people bring ""culture."" The locals are people who supposedly accept ""culture."" This view is pervasive, and many (including me in my teenage years) believed this. It was for this reason that my friends and I dreamed of leaving Orlando and go somewhere where things happened. It all changed one afternoon, thanks to a rather unexpected humanities moment.
How I got the book in the first place is part of its random charm. In 2005 or 2006, Tom Levine—a local fisherman, author, and “character”—showed up in my parents’ two-person CPA business in Orlando, FL. Levine periodically sells his books business-to-business or in farmers’ markets in Central Florida, using his charisma and humor in equal measure. My parents declined to turn their office into a small-scale bookstore but did buy a couple of his books—including Bite Me! I, a twelve-year-old girl who didn't fish, was clearly not the intended audience. And yet, I quickly came to love this book.
Tom Levine’s Bite Me! is an admittedly unusual choice for an inspirational book. It’s a slender collection of essays about Levine’s travels. Described in one paper as “Part Hiaasen, part Hemingway,” Levine writes to celebrate nature, critique the overdevelopment of “paradise,” and of course to support his fishing expeditions. On the surface, his book Bite Me! is a humorous take on his journeys around the world. But what truly struck my interest was his deep and open love for the natural world of Florida. Levine articulates a clear argument for preserving our natural splendor. Not for tourists to ogle on vacation, but because the swamps, coastal wetlands, and pinewoods of Florida were innately valuable and worth saving—just as much as any mountain, scenic alpine lake, or rocky beach. It changed my relationship with my surroundings, I started thinking of Florida as a place within the world rather than a suburb outside of it.
This new appreciation, in turn, led me to investigate my state’s history, environment, and literature. I started reading in earnest the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Carl Hiaasen, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, and others. I realized that there was a cacophony of voices in the state who all have painted a full picture of Florida as a strange and special place that doesn’t need others to determine its worth. That the land and its many peoples are historied and important, and that Florida's troubled past and diverse actors deserved consideration. The land they lived on transformed from a boring backdrop to a central part of the Flordia story.
This radical new point of view ultimately brought me to a MA and Ph.D. on Florida’s colonial past. You can say that Florida has become, to my great surprise, my life’s work.
When I moved away for graduate school, I thought I may feel triumphant in realizing my childhood goal of leaving. Instead, I have found myself longing for the woods and beaches I used to traverse. Every time I return to this unexpected book, I feel like I’m with Levine searching the waterways and coastlines of the world to rediscover Florida and an elusive bite. From where I sit today, the ghost of my hometown still sits at my side. It floats around in my thoughts and writing and appears to have settled in for good.","Tom Levine","Bite Me!",,2005-2010,"Rebecca Earles, 27, graduate student (Rice University)",,,,,,bite-me-florida-humanities-moment,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"NCH Summer Graduate Student Residency ","Colonialism,Culture,Florida,Levine, Tom,Memory,Southern United States,Storytelling",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/505/florida-landscape-3753092_640.jpg,Text,"Graduate Student Residents 2021",1,0
"George Washington and the Movement of Enslaved Persons to Barbados",,"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. ",,,,"June 2018","Kristen Fallon, 25, English Teacher",,,,,,george-washington-and-the-movement-of-enslaved-persons-to-barbados,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Andy Mink","Barbados,Colonialism,History,Slavery,Teachers & Teaching,Washington, George",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/185/IMG_1306.JPG,Text,"Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute",1,0
"Water Is Life: Thousands Have Lived Without Love, Not One Without Water",,"I remember visiting the Washington House in Barbados this past summer on a Virginia Geographic Alliance travel grant and being marveled at the dripping stones on the residence. The use of the limestone vessels as filters was introduced by the Spanish. In the period when drip stones were in regular use, no supply of chlorinated water was available. Centuries later, Barbados is still plagued by water concerns. As one of the Caribbean’s most popular destinations was struck at the height of tourism season. A sewage leak, which the Barbados Water Authority (BWA) called a “crisis” was sweeping across the parts of the island’s popular south coast.
Water is life! I recall reading the newspaper headlines during my weeklong visit of the health alerts. I connected the moment to my very own. Just before departing for my travels, I endured a water main break in my home and made me realize how I often take for granted water. Freshwater is necessary for the surviving of all living organism on Earth. More specifically, how at this particular juncture, the solution for improvements of water quality in Barbados ( and many other countries) is still prevalent.
",,,,"June 21, 2018 ","Lisa Coates, PhD and Teacher Leader ",,,,,,water-is-life,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Andy Mink","Barbados,Colonialism,Technology,Water Filtration",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/186/Fountain.jpg,Text,"Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute",1,0
"The Pledge of Barbados",,"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.
",,"The Pledge of Barbados",,"June 18, 2018","Elizabeth Mulcahy, Social Studies Teacher",,,,,,the-pledge-of-barbados,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Andy Mink","Barbados,Chamberlain Bridge,Citizenship,Colonialism,History,Nationalism,Teachers & Teaching",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/190/barbados_flag.png,Text,"Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute",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",https://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
"The Ho Chi Minh and Marcus Garvey Connection ",,"This seminar has been an amazing experience for me. I have always admired Ho Chi Minh. His commitment to the people of Vietnam and his efforts to free his land from colonialism is such an inspirational story. I must admit that I had never heard of the term Contested Territory before I came to this NEH two-week seminar. After much study over these two weeks, I can see how contested territory fits this topic. Each time the Vietnamese people attempted to rise and reclaim their territory, they were met with resistance from colonizers who had a vested interest in preserving their presence in the country for in my opinion, political and economic reasons.
I learned so much about the battle of Dien Bien Phu, The Ho Chi Minh Trail, Contested Territories, GIS Mapping, and some of the comrades who assistant in the movement to liberate Vietnam. However, my greatest moments were the GIS mapping assignment we received in the first week. Our team decided to create a GIS map that centered around Ho Chi Minh travels. I was stunned by how many places and people this person encountered. In my opinion, it is his travels that shaped his outlook and set the mental framework for him to be able to return to Vietnam with a strong ideology of independence, Nationalism, and Communism.
After our presentation, I decided to do more research in this area and discovered a film by Floyd Webb entitled Ho Chi Minh in Harlem: Nguyen Ai Quoc, Marcus Garvey and the American Empire. I was beyond excited to see the connection between Marcus Garvey and Ho Chi Minh as I see the Black Struggle in the United States similar to the Vietnam struggle in that both races were in a constant battle for liberation and freedom and contesting territory or carving out a space on the earth where people could express their own ideologies and live their own way of life. Marcus Garvey was a huge proponent of Black people in America carving out territories within the United States and creating their own government structures, military, political systems, etc. To know that Ho Chi Minh attended Marcus Garvey lectures and meetings was rewarding in that it shows that Ho Chi Minh met with all races in his quests to build a bridge and shape his identity which moved him closer to contesting territory and win the ultimate battle for Vietnam; Independence.",,"Ho Chi Minh in Harlem: Nguyen Ai Quoc, Marcus Garvey and the American Empire by Floyd Webb",,"July 2018 (during the Contested Territory Seminar)","Solomon C. Williams, 38 years old, teacher of high school American Government and Economics ",,,,,,ho-chi-minh-marcus-garvey,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,http://filmfablab.de/wordpress/2016/05/15/ho-chi-minh-in-harlem/,"Colonialism,Documentary Films,Garvey, Marcus,Geopolitics,Hồ Chí Minh,Ho Chi Minh in Harlem: Nguyen Ai Quoc, Marcus Garvey and the American Empire,Intersectionality,Liberation,Vietnam,Webb, Floyd",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/207/ho-chi-minh-2026935_1280.png,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0
"Vietnamese Declaration of Independence",,"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.
",,"The Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam ",,"7/18/2018 ","Dorothy Morris-Ross, 71, High School Teacher",,,,,,vietnamese-declaration-of-independence,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"NEH Summer Teachers Institute","Colonialism,Hồ Chí Minh,Teachers & Teaching,The Proclamation of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam,Vietnam",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/211/Vietnam_Declaration.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)",https://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)",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/214/GOSouth.jpg,"Still Image","Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0
"Scottish Highlands",,"I've always loved to travel, and one of my favorite parts is getting to have a connection to the place that in our classrooms we refer to in the abstract. It makes the history more tangible, real, and often provides perspective that we don't get from secondary sources. While travelling in Scotland last summer, I did one of those seemingly cheesy bus tours that carts you around to different scenic and historic locations.
The legacy of English rule and colonization is still very present and visceral to the Scottish people. Hearing the stories being told about the breaking of the clans, the violence towards rebels, and seeing some of those monuments lent a viewpoint that I hadn't really been privy to. This was a topic that I had learned mostly from an English perspective, minus a movie or TV show here and there. Watching ""Braveheart"" is one thing, but hearing a descendant of a Scottish rebel speak of the events as though he were there is another. Standing in Glencoe valley and hearing of the skirmishes that occurred adds another layer of understanding. To this day, the experience makes me reconsider the phrase ""History is written by the victor."" What other perspectives are we missing by staying in one place?",,"A summer trip to Edinburgh, Scotland ",,"July, 2018","Sarah Murphy, Teacher in Virginia",,,,,,scottish-highlands,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,FCPS,"Colonialism,History,Scotland,Teachers & Teaching,Travel",https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/9/327/Scotland_HM_image.jpg,Text,"Teacher Advisory Council",1,0