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AddRan College of Liberal Arts
Department of History
AddRan College of Liberal Arts
Department of History

2019 Schmidt Symposium

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2019 Schmidt Symposium Poster

The Vietnam War

March 22-23, 2019
Dee J. Kelly Alumni & Visitors Center

Featured Presentation

James Wright

President Emeritus and Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth College

James Wright is a Marine Corps veteran. An accomplished writer and scholar, his most recent work includes Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation and Its War (St. Martin’s, 2017), which offers a compelling account of combat experiences in the Vietnam War and the lasting impact of the war on American memory. Other publications include Those Who Have Borne the Battle: A History of America’s Wars and Those Who Fought Them (Public Affairs, 2012) and articles appearing in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, and Huffington Post. Dr. Wright collaborated with senators in 2008 to develop the Yellow Ribbon program, which allows veterans to use their GI Bill benefits at private colleges and universities. His scholarship and support for veterans has earned him critical acclaim in and out of academia from the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Commander in Chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Secretary of the Army, and the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation. He has been an ABC-TV News “person of the week” and a New England Council “New Englander of the Year.”

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2019 Schmidt Symposium poster

Panelists


Christian G. Appy

Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts

Christian AppyHis research focuses on modern U.S. history, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. He has authored three books on the Vietnam War, including American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity (Viking, 2015), Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (Viking, 2003), and Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (University of North Carolina, 1993). He is now working on a book tentatively entitled “Fallout: The Nuclear Age in American Culture, Politics, and Protest from Hiroshima to the Global War on Terror.”

Pierre Asselin

Professor of History and Dwight E. Stanford Chair in American Foreign Relations at San Diego State University

Pierre Asselin His area of primary expertise is the Cold War, with a concentration on East and Southeast Asia and transnationalism in the context of the Vietnam War. Dr. Asselin has authored numerous texts on the Vietnam War, including Vietnam’s American War: A History (Cambridge, 2018), Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (University of California, 2013), and A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (University of North Carolina, 2002). He is currently co-editing The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, Volume III: Endings (forthcoming, 2020) and recently started work on his fourth book project, a history of the global Vietnam War.

Beth Bailey

Foundation Distinguished Professor and the Founding Director of the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies at the University of Kansas

Beth BaileyHer primary research interests include recent American history, the military and U.S. society, and the history of gender and sexuality. She has written several books, including America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (Harvard, 2009), Sex in the Heartland (Harvard, 1999), and From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in 20th Century America (Johns Hopkins University, 1988). She co-authored The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii (The Free Press, 1992) and is currently working on a new book entitled “The U.S. Army and the Problem of Race, 1965-1985.”

Gregory A. Daddis

Associate Professor of History at Chapman University

Gregory DaddisGregory A. Daddis is Associate Professor of History at Chapman University where he directs the program in War and Society. His research interests focus on the history of the Vietnam War and the Cold War era. His publications include Withdrawal: Reassessing America’s Final Years in Vietnam (Oxford, 2017), Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam (Oxford, 2014), No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War (Oxford, 2011), and Fighting in the Great Crusade: An 8th Infantry Artillery Officer in World War II (Louisiana State University, 2002). He is a retired U.S. Army colonel and veteran of Operation Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom.

Mark Atwood Lawrence

Associate Professor of History, Distinguished Fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and Director of Graduate Studies at the Clements Center for National Security at The University of Texas at Austin

Mark LawrenceHe has written extensively on topics related to U.S. foreign relations, policymaking, and the Vietnam War. In addition to editing  a volume of primary sources about the Vietnam War and co-editing four other collections, Professor Lawrence has authored two books, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (University of California, 2005) and The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (Oxford University, 2008).

Edwin A. Martini

Professor of History at Western Michigan University

Edwin MartiniEdwin A. Martini is Professor of History at Western Michigan University, where he specializes in the history of American warfare. He is the author of Agent Orange: History, Science, and the Politics of Uncertainty (University of Massachusetts, 2012) and Invisible Enemies: The American War on Vietnam, 1975-2000 (University of Massachusetts, 2007). He has also edited and co-edited several collections of essays, including At War: The Military and American Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Rutgers University, 2018), Proving Grounds: Militarized Landscapes, Weapons Testing, and the Environmental Consequences of American Bases (University of Washington, 2015), and Four Decades On: Vietnam, the United States, and the Legacies of the Second Indochina War (Duke University, 2013). He is currently working on a new book project entitled “Playing with Fire: A Global History of Napalm.”

Lorena Oropeza

Associate Professor of History at University of California, Davis

Lorena OropezaLorena Oropeza is a historian of Chicano and Latino history with a focus on race, foreign policy, and empire in 20th century America. She is the author of ¡Raza Sí! ¡Guerra No!: Chicano Protest and Patriotism During the Viet Nam War Era (University of California, 2005), and the co-editor of Enriqueta Vasquez and  the Chicano Movement: Writings from El Grito del Norte (Arte Público, 2006). Her next book, The Kingdom of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina and his World is forthcoming this year from the University of North Carolina.

Sandra Scanlon

Lecturer in American history in the Centre for War Studies at University College Dublin

Sandra ScanlonSandra Scanlon is a Lecturer in American history in the Centre for War Studies at University College Dublin and has been a Fulbright Scholar at Emory University. Her research centers on American political culture and U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War with a special focus on political movements, particularly conservative activism and American national identity. She published her first book, The Pro-War Movement: Domestic Support for The Vietnam War and the Making of Modern American Conservatism in 2013 (University of Massachusetts), and a co-edited collection of essays, Reform and Renewal: Transatlantic Relations during the 1960s and 1970s in 2009 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).

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