Teaching the History of the Vietnam Wars: A Geographic History of the Vietnam Wars

This module is part of the #AHRSyllabus project. More information about the project can be found on the AHR website under #AHRSyllabus. 

A visitor encountering a set of historical photographs that were part of the 2023 Vietnamese American Roundtable’s annual commemoration for the end of the Vietnam War in San Jose. Photo courtesy of the Vietnamese American Roundtable.

Christian C. Lentz, Elena Samkin, Vincent Pham, Duyen Tong, Chris Bunin, and Andy Mink

Four high school teachers who were part of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in 2022, “Contested Territory: America’s Involvement in Vietnam, 1945-75,” reflect on their teaching of the Vietnam wars and present an ensemble of classroom activities that have helped their students understand war in new ways. Master teachers who work in diverse classrooms across the United States, they offer innovative learning activities on the Vietnam wars that explore the everyday experiences of war; the roles of ideologies in shaping conflict; soundscapes of war; and the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to study the complex geographies of war. Framing essays by the Institute’s co-leaders provide context on new Vietnam war scholarship and the design of inquiry-based practices that foster critical historical thinking.

Read the module in full here.