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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Aug 8

Gerard will be remembered as an inspirational teacher, a wonderful scholar and a true friend to many people in Vietnamese Studies and beyond.

Photo: Christopher Goscha (Université du Québec à Montréal), Charles Keith (Michigan State U), and Gerard Sasges.

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Aug 8

As the long-term Vietnam Director of the University of California Education Abroad Program based in Hanoi (2002-2007 and again from 2008-2011), Gerard provided an academically rigorous and culturally immersive Vietnamese experience to scores of American undergraduate students.
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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Aug 8

Gerard also completed a series of innovative shorter studies on modern Vietnamese economic history, a hugely important but long-neglected subtopic (e.g. “Scaling the Commanding Heights: The Colonial Conglomerates and the Changing Political Economy of French Indochina,” Modern Asian Studies 45.5).
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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Aug 8

He also supervised and edited a groundbreaking collection of oral histories about the nature of work in Vietnam: It’s a Living: Work and Life in Vietnam Today (NUS Press: 2013).
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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Aug 8

...on the field of Vietnamese history through his superb first monograph: Imperial Intoxication: Alcohol and the Making of Colonial Indochina (University of Hawaii Press: 2017).
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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Aug 8

JVS mourns the premature passing of Gerard Sasges, a brilliant scholar of Vietnam and an Associate Professor in the Dept of Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore.
A Canadian national with a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, Gerard made a significant mark...
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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · May 17

JVS Editor-in-Chief Van Nguyen-Marshall’s book “Between War and the State: Civil Society in South Vietnam, 1954-1975” is the subject of a new Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum at H-Diplo.
The forum is introduced by Peter Zinoman—another JVS EIC.

issforum.org/roundtables/...

H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 16-38 on Nguyen-Marshall, Between War and the State

H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum 12 May 2025| PDF: https://issforum.org/to/jrt16-38 | Website: rjissf.org | X: @HDiplo Editor: Diane Labrosse Commissioning Editors: Thomas…

issforum.org

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 30

And in 2006—at the journal’s founding—JVS (vol. 1, no. 1-2) also featured a debate between Keith Taylor and Robert Buzzacano about the war.
See Edward Miller’s “War Stories: The Taylor-Buzzanco Debate and How We Think about the Vietnam War.”

Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 30

“The Role of Weapons in the Second Indochina War: Republic of Vietnam Perspectives and Perceptions” by Martin Loicano (2013, vol. 8, no. 2).

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 30

Historian Sean Fear’s essay “The Ambiguous Legacy of Ngô Đình Diệm in South Vietnam’s Second Republic (1967–1975” (2016, vol. 11, no. 1).

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 30

JVS has also published many stand-alone research articles on the conflict. They include:

Historian Nu-Anh Tran’s “Will the Real Caravelle Manifesto Please Stand Up?: A Critique and a New Translation“ (2023, vol. 18, no. 3).

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 30

JVS has also published pioneering research on the conflict in our pages over the past two decades.
In 2009, JVS published a special issue on the Vietnam War (vol. 4, no. 3).

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 30

The issue includes thirteen new translations of works by Vietnamese authors of all political backgrounds responding to the war and its end. It also includes a photo essay by photographer Stephen Black and his images taken from multiple regions of Vietnam in 1978.

In a wooded area, two small children playing behind a piece of scrap metal marked "US ARMY"

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 30

The Journal of Vietnamese Studies announces a new special issue to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, guest-edited by historian Nu-Anh Tran and comparative literature scholar Trinh M. Luu.

Linocut by Lể Trọng, published in the Republic of Vietnam on September 20, 1970. Image inspired by the sheet music for “Lá thư đô thị” [A Letter from the City], composed by Tuấn Lê (Lê Văn Tuấn, 1952–1988). Courtesy of Jason Gibbs.

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

Browse the entire issue here:

online.ucpress.edu/jvs/issue/20/2

Volume 20 Issue 2 | Journal of Vietnamese Studies | University of California Press

online.ucpress.edu

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

The issue also features original reviews of five new books.

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

In the Multimedia Reviews section, a photo essay by educator and photographer Stephen Black provides a glimpse into everyday life in postwar Vietnam circa 1978. Seen through the lens of a Western visitor, the images provide unique insight into an understudied period.

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Marching Young Pioneers, 1978. Stephen Black, 1978. The candid black-and-white photo, apparently shot outside, shows a group of young Vietnamese children in white shirts and red neckerchiefs regarding the camera. Some of the children are waving and one is holding a small flag.

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

Although each translated work offers a unique perspective, as a collective they touch on shared themes of reunification in and after 1975—troubled reunion and separation, migration, coerced reeducation, and artistic and cultural reform.

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

JVS gratefully acknowledges the support of USIP for the translations in this issue. We also thank the thirteen translators who helped produce them, as well as the original copyright holders who generously allowed us to present their works in this form.

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

In a preface, Andrew Wells-Dang—Senior Expert on SEA at the US Institute of Peace—writes “This special issue is a call to deepen our understanding and commitment to the persistent tasks of acknowledging the past, strengthening human relationships, and envisioning the future.”

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

“Together, these translations depict the coming of peace as an experience that was simultaneously collective and partisan.”

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

“At the same time, the pieces emphasize shared sentiments and experiences, such as the yearning for peace and reunion, the pain of separation from loved ones, the ache of homesickness and dislocation, and the difficulty of overcoming differences. (...)”

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

In their Introduction, guest editors Luu and Tran write
“The accounts reflect a wide range of political perspectives, from ardent anti-communism to committed communism, and highlight the enduring partisan differences that divided many Vietnamese long after the war. (…)”

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

This special issue collects thirteen original translations of works on the Vietnam War’s end and its aftermath. Songs, poems, memoirs, and fiction give voice to Vietnamese on all sides – winners and losers; soldiers and civilians; those who stayed and those who left.

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Page one of the table of contents of JVS 20(2).

Page two of the table of contents of JVS 20(2).

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Journal of Vietnamese Studies @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social · Apr 26

Introducing JVS 20(2), “Rupture and Reunion: New Translations About the End of the War in Vietnam.” The issue—commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of April 30, 1975—is guest-edited by historian Nu-Anh Tran and comparative literature scholar Trinh M. Luu.

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The cover of JVS 20(2). A stylized image of a seated man in fatigues watching four helicopters ascending or descending at close range.

Linocut by Lể Trọng, published in the Republic of Vietnam on September 20, 1970. Image inspired by the sheet music for “Lá thư đô thị” [A Letter from the City], composed by Tuấn Lê (Lê Văn Tuấn, 1952–1988). Courtesy of Jason Gibbs.

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