This informal seminar is open to all Columbia affiliates and neighbors and will meet:

Wednesdays, July 16, 23, 30, and August 6, 5:30 – 7 p.m. Refreshments will be served.

Note: Separate registration required for each session.

The war that seemed half a world away suddenly felt very close. Daily, news of the devastation beamed directly to viewers around the world, a horror impossible to ignore as it unfolded in real-time. Columbia’s campus, unable to ignore the suffering abroad and its nation’s involvement, rose in anger—at the war and, at times, seemingly at itself. US involvement in the Vietnam War ended 50 years ago this year. The consequences of that war—for the Vietnamese people, US and Vietnamese combat veterans, and society—linger. At home, the war brought new forms of protest to campuses across the country. In many ways, we live, work, and study on a campus shaped by war. This seminar considers the literature of and related to the US war in Vietnam. How might literary engagements with this earlier moment of conflict help us navigate the current day with passion and empathy?

16 July: Introductions & Literature of the War

• Graham Greene, from The Quiet American (1955)
• Tim O’Brien, “On the Rainy River” from The Things They Carried (1990)
• Dang Thuy Tram, from Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: the Diary of Dang Thuy Tram (2005)
• Apocalypse Now, dir. Coppola (1979)

23 July: Protest! Literature Against the War

• Norman Mailer, from The Armies of the Night (1968)
• Wallace Terry, from Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans (1984)
• Simon Wall, from Peace and Freedom: The Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements in the 1960s (2006)

30 July: After War and Reflections

• Viet Thanh Nguyen, from Nothing Ever Dies (2016) and The Sympathizer (2015)
• Tobias Wolff, from In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War (1994)
• “Watt Raises Obstacle on Vietnam Memorial,” New York Times (13 Jan. 1982)
• “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen,” the finale to M*A*S*H (1983)

6 Aug: How does the Vietnam experience continue to shape campus culture?

• Bill Chappell, “In Columbia University’s protests of 1968 and 2024, what’s similar—and different,” NPR (29 Apr. 2024).
• Columbia College Student Council, “We Columbia University Students Urge You to Listen to Our Voices” (4 May 2024).
• Mansee Khurana, “What a 1968 Columbia Protestor Makes of Today’s Encampment,” NPR (29 Apr. 2024).

We will distribute the reading selections over email and bring hardcopies to class. There is no requirement to buy anything. We’ll start each seminar with a brief introduction, followed by some time to review/read the texts in focus. The bulk of our time will then be spent in guided conversation.

About the Instructor: Nick Utzig is assistant professor of English in the Dept. of English and World Languages at West Point. He received his PhD from Harvard University, where his research focused on representations of war in English Renaissance literature. His scholarly work appears in Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, and The Journal of War and Culture Studies. Before his PhD, Nick was a US Army aviation officer and served in Afghanistan and Iraq.