Huong Thi Diu Nguyen

The extensive scholarly focus on political and military activities, and the comparative neglect of social and cultural change, particularly in the understudied central region of a divided Vietnam, has become a significant gap in studies of the Vietnam War in both Vietnam and the United States. Concentrating on changes in lifestyle, social relations, and cultural activities, this project exposes the experiences of people of all walks of life and emphasizes the voices of common people before the January 1968 Tet Offensive. In Hue, the former imperial capital and national center of education, religion, and culture, the war was probably not always so immediately felt in daily life. Based on archival research and oral histories inside and outside Vietnam, this grassroots history investigates how war affected the social life of ordinary people in this central Vietnamese city during a critical period in the Vietnam War.