The Vietnamese Conflict: An International History
Syllabus and Survival
Guide
History
498 – Fall 2010
Mondays,
7:00-9:45 pm, Sierra Hall 268
Instructor
Dr.
Thomas W. Devine
Office
Hours:
The
following books are available at the Matador Bookstore. All other readings will be provided in class or
made available on the web syllabus. The
Bookstore sends back all books after week four of the semester, so if you plan
to purchase your books there, you should buy all of them early in the semester.
• Mark Philip
Bradley, Imagining
•
Eugene Burdick and William
Lederer, The
Ugly American
•
William J. Duiker, Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided
• Seth Jacobs, Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh
Diem and the Origins of
•
Le Ly Hayslip, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places
•
Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir
•
Duong Thu Huong,
To
subvert the system and to save yourself some money, you should consider buying used
copies of the books. You are likely to
find copies priced significantly lower at the following websites:
www.bookfinder.com; www.half.com; www.amazon.com; www.abebooks.com
Requirements
& Grading
Class
Participation, Quizzes, and Short Writing Assignments 35%
Midterm
Examination (October 18) 20%
CLICK HERE FOR MIDTERM STUDY GUIDE
Semester Project [final version due November
24] 25%
CLICK HERE FOR SECONDARY SOURCE ASSIGNMENT
Primary Source Assignment [due December 13] 20%
CLICK HERE FOR “HELPFUL HINTS” ON THE
PRIMARY SOURCE PAPER
All grading will be done on the +/ –
system. Any assignment not completed
will be counted as a “zero” in calculating the final grade.
Spirit of the Course
For years, the Vietnam War has haunted many
Americans, from high government officials, to antiwar protesters, to veterans,
to the survivors of those who didn’t make it home. Arguably, the fear of
repeating the mistakes of that painful conflict continues to shape
In particular, we are better able to place
the war in a broader context. We see,
for example, that its origins long predated American involvement, and that the
issues at stake – particularly for the Vietnamese – transcended the cold war
considerations of
In looking at the Vietnamese conflict, then,
we will examine accounts from a variety of perspectives and read across various
genres – novels, memoirs, poetry and speeches, as well as scholarly books and
articles. I encourage you to be open to the various points of view, but also to
be critical in your reading of them.
Keep in mind who the author believes is his or her audience, what points
he or she most wants that audience to absorb, and how an author’s biases,
preconceptions, or personal experiences may color his or her interpretations of
events
It
is my hope that you will finish the course with a better understanding of the
war and the circumstances that precipitated and sustained it. But I also hope you gain something more: a
rich sense of the “fabric” of Vietnam during this era – a feel for how both
soldiers and civilians on all sides lived their daily lives, the tragedies they
suffered, and the triumphs they celebrated; an appreciation for the visions,
hopes, ideas, and ideologies that intrigued and seduced them; an awareness of
the problems and tough decisions that confronted both everyday people and top
policy makers; and, perhaps most importantly, a recognition of the
contingencies of history and an empathy for the historical actors who struggled
with or fell victim to these contingencies.
In essence, this course, along with
your 497, is the capstone of your academic experience in college. Most of you will not have the opportunity to
engage in this kind of exercise again. Make the most of it by giving the course
your full effort and doing the assigned work.
Believe it or not, in later years you’ll appreciate that you did.
Explanation of Requirements
Completion of
Assigned
There’s
no getting around it – this class will require extensive reading. But, as a
senior seminar, it is supposed to. To do well in this course, you will need to
complete the reading, but you will also need to have given it some
thought. Read with a pencil in hand –
take notes in the margins. Record terms
that are unfamiliar to you or that you don’t understand, points that you find interesting
or surprising, arguments with which you strongly agree or disagree, or ideas
that connect to things we’ve talked about in previous classes. If I provide
study questions, print them, jot down your answers, and bring them to class.
Frame your own questions when you come across something you don’t fully
understand. Also, read smart by managing your time effectively – don’t read
every single word of a book’s first four chapters and nothing thereafter
because you ran out of time.
Class
Participation
The class will be conducted in a seminar
format and therefore will emphasize student interaction and discussion. Our meetings will be conversations – free,
open, and informal exchanges of ideas based on the assigned reading – and I
expect everyone to take an active part.
I will do my best to insure each student has ample opportunity
to contribute, but, ultimately, it will be up to you to make certain that you
remain an active participant rather than a passive observer. Missing class will
hurt your participation grade, however in order to receive some credit, you may turn in either
a typed 2-page, single-spaced summary of the week’s reading assignment or typed
answers to that week’s study questions. You will find that the key to success
in this class is attending every session and participating in the discussion.
If you do those two things, everything else will become easier.
Quizzes
There
will be occasional short quizzes throughout the semester. The quizzes will
provide an incentive (and a reward) for completing the reading. If you have
done all the reading – or even most of it – you should have no difficulty doing
well on the quizzes. A high quiz average
can significantly improve your overall grade. On the other hand, if you don’t
keep up with the reading, you can end up with very low quiz scores that will
sink your grade even if you do well on the midterm and paper assignments.
Homework and In-class
Writing Assignments
In
order to help you get the most out of the reading and to prepare you to discuss
it in class, there will be occasional homework assignments that you will complete
as you do the reading. These will be collected in class. Assignments not turned
in will count as a zero, so avoid doing damage to your grade by turning in each
assignment on time. There will also be a few in-class writing assignments that
will help you to focus your thoughts and express them in a clear, concise
manner.
Midterm Examination
The
Midterm Examination will consist of 5-7 short essay questions and one or more
long essays. You will have a choice of
topics for the long essays. I will provide
a study guide that will help you prepare for the exam.
You are responsible for bringing an unmarked
blue book to the midterm.
Semester Project
This
assignment allows you to become an “expert” on some aspect of the Vietnamese
conflict by reading widely in the secondary literature that addresses your
subject (mostly journal articles and some book chapters). You will then report on what historians have
had to say about the topic, assess their arguments, and draw some conclusions
of your own. I will ask you to submit an
annotated bibliography of the sources you intend to use 2-3 weeks before the
assignment is due. I will also read
completed drafts if you submit them at least 5 days before the deadline.
Primary
Source Assignment
In
keeping with the international emphasis of the course, you will choose a
specific event associated with the Vietnamese conflict and analyze how it was
covered by at least three different sources – only one of which can be
American. The paper should focus on how and why your
sources differ in their interpretations of the event. A more detailed description of the assignment
will be handed out in class, however you should expect
to write an essay of approximately 5-7 pages.
Surviving
History 498…
Getting the
Figure
out approximately how many pages you can read in an hour and then calculate how
many hours it will take you to read each book. (Most History majors read
scholarly books at about 20-30 pages an hour. Memoirs and novels usually go
faster.) If you know ahead of time how
long it will take to get through a book, you can manage your time more
realistically. Don’t put yourself in the position where you’ve read every word
of the first three chapters but nothing thereafter because you ran out of time.
To help insure you get the reading done, make a commitment to reading 20 pages
of the next week’s assignment when you get home from class. Once you’re into a
book, it will be easier to keep going. Each day you put off beginning a book
makes it less likely you’ll be able to finish it in time for class. If it’s clear you won’t have enough time to
complete a book during a given week, use the study questions to guide your
reading. Skim through the book until you come across material that is covered
in the questions. Since the study questions focus on the most important parts
of the book, if you are able to answer them, you will arrive in class better
prepared to participate in the discussion.
Attendance
Since
this class meets only once a week and its success depends on active student
participation, it is important – and it is expected – that you will be at every
session. I do
take attendance before and after the break. Do not leave at the break and expect to be credited with having attended
the entire class. You cannot
participate when you are not present, so each absence will lower your
participation grade.
Common Courtesy &
Academic Honesty
Since
I assume that all of you possess impeccable manners and are of upstanding
character, most of this should go without saying, but I put it in writing here
so that there will be no misunderstanding.
Please turn off all cell phones and other electronic gadgets while you
are in class. Arrive on time; do not
walk out in the middle of class or leave at the break unless it is an emergency
or you have spoken to me about it ahead of time. Do not tell me things that are not true and
expect me to believe them. Do not cheat.
Do not plagiarize. If you do so, I will find you out and make your life
miserable. (References available upon request.) Please
act courteously and professionally. Show some class. It’s part of being an
educated person.
Problems
I
appreciate that many CSUN evening students are stretching themselves quite
thin, often working full time while taking classes at night. If you are feeling overwhelmed, find yourself
falling behind, or are having any problems outside of class that are adversely
affecting your performance in class, be sure to let me know. Do not wait until the end of the
semester when it will be too late.
I am more than willing to work with you to insure you “survive,” but I
need to know you are having difficulties. You will find that as long as you keep me up
to speed, I will be very sympathetic.
Discussion Topics and Assignments
23 August Introduction: An explanation
of course objectives, mechanics, and procedures.
30 August “Beyond the Cold War Paradigm” – Race, Culture, Colonial Policy, and the
Shaping of Vietnamese-American Relations
6 September LABOR DAY
13 September “August and
Everything After” –
Duiker, Sacred
War, Introduction, Chapter 1
20
September “Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss…” – The U.S. Replaces the French
in Vietnam
George C. Herring,
“Franco-American Conflict in Indochina, 1950-1954”
Duiker, Sacred
War, Chapter 2
27 September “Leper Without a
4 October “Our
Miracle Man in
11 October “To Escalate or Not? -- LBJ Faces Decisions on the
Fredrik Logevall, “’There Ain’t No Daylight’: Lyndon Johnson and the Politics of Escalation”
David L. Anderson,
“The American War in Vietnam: Escalation”
Sandra C Taylor, “Lyndon
Johnson and the Vietnamese”
18 October MIDTERM EXAMINATION
25 October “With Friends Like
These….” –
Chen Jian, “China’s
Involvement in the Vietnam War”
Robert K. Brigham, Guerrilla
Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Vietnam
War, Chapter 3
Film:
Vietnam a Television History vol. 3
Optional Reading
Yang Kuisong,
“Changes in Mao Zedong’s Attitude toward the
Indochina War, 1949-1973”
Ilya Gaiduk, “The Vietnam War and Soviet-American Relations,
1964-1973: New Russian Evidence”
(If
you plan to do your secondary source assignment on topics related to
1 November NO
CLASS
8 November “The Vietnamese
Conflict: A ‘Rice-roots’ Perspective”
15 November “Vietnam after the Revolution:
A ‘Rice-roots’ Perspective”
Reading: Duong Thu Huong, Paradise of the Blind
22 November “The Second
Vietnamese War: The Northern Perspective, 1960-1975”
Reading: Duiker, Sacred
War, Chapters 3-6
29 November “The Second
Vietnamese War: The NLF Perspective, 1960-1975”
Reading: Truong Nhu Tang, A Vietcong Memoir
6 December “How Great The Cost?” – Tet, Peace, and the
Legacy of War
Reading: Duiker, Sacred
War, Chapter 7
William S. Turley, “Of
Lessons and Their Price”
Luu Doan Huynh, “The American War in Vietnamese Memory”