Women and America's Vietnam War Symposium
Held on March 1, 2024
The United States formally ended its participation in what it called the Vietnam War fifty years ago. Many are still living with the legacies of this conflict, and one of the populations deeply affected by this devastating event were the women of many backgrounds who served militarily, had loved ones go to war, tended those affected by their direct participation in the war, protested its impact, or otherwise attempted to make sense of the war’s complex experiences and legacies.
In connection with USU’s ongoing Bringing War Home Project, which is collecting objects and stories from veterans and military families about modern war, students, scholars, creative artists, and community members were invited to share perspectives, especially from local history, in order to open conversations about the experiences of women who participated on multiple sides and sites of this conflict. We encouraged interdisciplinary submissions from history, anthropology, material culture studies, archival studies, communications, literature, and the creative arts.
Presenters
Thi Bui
Thi Bui was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in 1978 as part of the “boat people” wave of refugees fleeing Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War. Her debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, (Abrams ComicArts, 2017) is a history of her and her parents' experiences of the war in Vietnam and after their arrival to the United States. It has been selected for an American Book Award, a Common Book for UCLA and other colleges and universities, an all-city read by Seattle and San Francisco public libraries, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in autobiography, and an Eisner Award finalist in reality-based comics. It made over thirty best of 2017 book lists.
Susan O'Neill
Susan O’Neill served as nurse in Vietnam and wrote an account of this experience in her collection of interconnected short stories, Don’t Mean Nothing, first published in 2001, and then revised and reissued in 2014.
Professor Kara Dixon Vuic
Kara Dixon Vuic, LCpl Benjamin W. Schmidt Professor of War, Conflict and Society in Twentieth-Century America, at Texas Christian University. She is the author of Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War (John Hopkins, 2009) and award-winning history of the USOs The Girls Next Door: Bringing the Home Front to the Front Lines (Harvard, 2019). She is currently working on a history of the debates about drafting women into the military. She is one of the leading experts on the history of American women and war and on the Vietnam War in particular.