Views from Mainland Southeast Asia: “Indochina” in a Century of Exchanges and Conflict, 1880s–1980s

EASTD 145 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

This seminar introduces students to the modern histories and cultures of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, examining the most consequential episodes in the intertwined and often tumultuous relationships among these three countries from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century. The course pays particular attention to “Indochina” as a colonial and postcolonial framework—one that at times connected, and at other times divided, the region’s peoples and states.
Throughout the seminar, students will engage with scholarly texts and films, as well as literary works, memoirs, and oral histories. The course asks a set of guiding questions: Does geographical proximity foster cultural similarity? Does forced inclusion in a colonial union such as French Indochina unite or divide colonized societies? Does shared political ideology necessarily lead to collaboration and mutual support? And how