Renowned PTSD expert Dr. Raymond Scurfield will speak this Thursday, April 19th, as part of our 2012 Guest Lecture Series.  The lecture will be in the Lanier Auditorium of the Texas Tech School of Law.  Admission is free and open to the public.

The mission of the Vietnam Center and Archive Guest Lecture Series is to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of students, faculty, and the community at large by bringing distinguished individuals to campus for presentations on specific aspects of the Vietnam War, its lasting impact on American politics, society and culture, and on contemporary issues in Southeast Asia.

This lecture series is funded in part by a generous grant from the Helen Jones Foundation.  For more information on the 2012 VNCA Guest Lecture Series or about Dr. Scurfield see http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/GLS.

The 4th Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Film Festival continues today with two films:

Indochine – 3:30pm

Thanh’s War – 7:30pm

And concludes tomorrow with:

The Scent of Green Papaya – 3:30pm

Sita Sings the Blues – 7:30pm

All showings will be in the Formby Room of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.  Admission is free and open to the public.

For more information see www.vietnam.ttu.edu/2012filmfestival

The 4th Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Film Festival begins today with two films:

Sita Sings the Blues – 3:30pm

The Scent of Green Papaya – 7:30pm

And continues tomorrow with:

Thanh’s War – 3:30pm

Indochine – 7:30pm

All showings will be in the Formby Room of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.  Admission is free and open to the public.

For more information see www.vietnam.ttu.edu/2012filmfestival

On February 1st five student workers started digitizing the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) Application Files of the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association (FVPPA) Collection.  These files record this history of over 10,000 Vietnamese who applied to immigrate to the United States and other countries following the end of the Vietnam War.  Many of the applicants in this collection spent years in reeducation camps before immigrating.

The FVPPA collection was brought to the Vietnam Center and Archive in 2005 by the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation.  This year the VNCA received a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for a three year, $144,000 project to digitize the files and make them available through the Virtual Vietnam Archive.  This is the second grant we have received for this collection from the NHPRC.  In 2008 we received funding to process the collection to make the physical materials available to researchers.  Since the start of the digitization project, work has been proceeding quickly and smoothly.  Currently over 1200 files have been digitized, totaling over 25,000 pages.  This pace of digitization has already put us ahead of schedule on the project.

The files can searched for through the Virtual Vietnam Archive search page (go to Advanced Search to limit your results to just this collection).  Those interested can also track the progress of the project on our ODP digitization page, which lists current digitization totals, news about the project, and files made available online in the past day.

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/vahp/digitization.php

The Vietnam Center and Archive is proud to present Dr. Raymond Scurfield on Thursday, April 19th at 7:00pm in the Lanier Auditorium of the Texas Tech University School of Law.  The lecture is free and open to the public.

A former professor of social work at the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast, Scurfield is an expert in PTSD. He served as an Army officer on a psychiatric team in Vietnam from 1968-69, and has spent three decades working with hundreds of combat veterans of the Vietnam War and other conflicts. Scurfield is the author of numerous books and articles on the effects of PTSD.

The mission of the Vietnam Center and Archive Guest Lecture Series is to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of students, faculty, and the community at large by bringing distinguished individuals to campus for presentations on specific aspects of the Vietnam War, its lasting impact on American politics, society and culture, and on contemporary issues in Southeast Asia.

This lecture series is funded in part by a generous grant from the Helen Jones Foundation.  For more information on the 2012 VNCA Guest Lecture Series see http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/GLS, or contact Mary Saffell at 806-742-9010 or mary.saffell@ttu.edu.

We have added a new feature onto the Advanced Search Page of the Virtual Vietnam Archive: the ability to exclude the full text of documents from keyword searches.  A new checkbox labeled “Search Full Text?” has been added next to the “Keyword/Item #” search fields.  This field is selected by default, meaning that full text will be included in the search.  To exclude the full text, deselect the checkbox.  For many searches, this will result in significantly fewer hits.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any other feature of the Virtual Vietnam Archive, please feel free to contact us at vawebmaster@ttu.edu.

The Vietnam Center and Archive is proud to announce the films for the 4th Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM) Film Festival, co-sponsored by the Texas Tech University Libraries:

The Scent of Green Papaya:
Monday, April 9^th – 7:30pm
Tuesday, April 17^th – 3:30pm
Set in Vietnam in the 1950s-60s, the film follows Mui as she leaves the rich household where she had served as a child to work in the home of a classical pianist. Mui finds beauty in the smallest things.

Sita Sings the Blues:
Monday, April 9^th – 3:30pm
Tuesday, April 17^th – 7:30pm
An animated retelling of the Hindu legend Ramayana, paralleled with events in the film’s creator’s real life in San Francisco, this film features a variety of animation techniques and musical styles.

Indochine:
Tuesday, April 10^th – 7:30pm
Monday, April 16^th – 3:30pm
Set in the turmoil of the French Indochina War in Vietnam, Indochine follows a French rubber plantation owner, an Annam Princess, and the French Naval Officer they are both in love with.

Thanh’s War:
Tuesday, April 10^th – 3:30pm
Monday, April 16^th – 7:30pm
At age 12, Pham Thanh was severely wounded by a US grenade that also killed his family.  Now an American citizen, Thanh tries to balance his Vietnamese and American identity and heritage.

All films will be presented in the Formby Room of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.  Admission is free and open to the public.

For more information see www.vietnam.ttu.edu/2012filmfestival

With regret, attendance at this year’s conference workshop will be by invitation only.  We realize this is a significant departure form our past events, but the purpose and focus of this workshop, as well as much more limited space and time, require us to develop a more limited forum.  The conference in 2013 (that will result from this workshop) will be hosted in Washington, DC, and will be open to public attendance.  As soon as we have firm dates and the location for that event, we will post information at this website as well as send out notifications via our newsletter and email notification system.

We regret any inconvenience this might cause.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Dr. Steve Maxner, director, Vietnam Center and Archive, at 806-742-3742 or via email at steve.maxner@ttu.edu.  Thank you.

As part of their American History TV Oral Histories series, C-SPAN3 will be airing a number of interviews conducted and filmed at the Pleiku-Ia Drang Veterans 40th Anniversary Commemoration held in Washington, DC, in November 2005.  The first interview in the series to be aired will be Part One of the interview with Lt. General Hal Moore, commanding officer of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment during the Battle of Ia Drang in 1965, and co-author of We Were Soldiers Once…And Young.

The interview will air on C-SPAN3 at 8am (ET) on Saturday, March 3rd, and again at 3pm (ET) on Sunday, March 4th, as well as at 4am (ET) on Monday, March 5th.  Part Two of the General Hal More interview will air the following weekend at 9am (ET) on Saturday, March 10th.  More interviews from the Commemoration will air over the next few months.  For a complete schedule see http://www.c-span.org/history/.  The interviews will also be available on the C-Span American History TV website after they air.

Brigadier General Tom Draude will speak this week as part of our 2012 Guest Lecture Series.  The lecture will be held on Thursday, March 1st at 7:00pm in the Lanier Auditorium of the Texas Tech School of Law.  Admission is free and open to the public.

The mission of the Vietnam Center and Archive Guest Lecture Series is to enrich the intellectual and cultural life of students, faculty, and the community at large by bringing distinguished individuals to campus for presentations on specific aspects of the Vietnam War, its lasting impact on American politics, society and culture, and on contemporary issues in Southeast Asia.

This lecture series is funded in part by a generous grant from the Helen Jones Foundation.  For more information on the 2012 VNCA Guest Lecture Series or about Dr. Sorley see http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/GLS.