FRESH/SOPH SEMINAR - Camouflaging the Chimera: African American Voices and Visions of the Vietnam War

This new, interdisciplinary seminar invites you to explore African American voices and visions of the Vietnam war through oral history, music, fiction, poetry, cinema and other primary sources.  For historical and contemporary context, we begin with reflections on and depictions of African American veterans of the American Civil War, Korea, and Iraq, via Natasha Trethewey's Pulitzer prize-winning Native Guard (2007), Toni Morrison's Home (2012), and David Oyelowo's Nightingale (2015). Novelist Judy Juanita then takes us to the Vietnam war era with Virgin Soul (2013), which traces Berkeley born freshman Geniece’s journey from Oakland City College through her involvement with the Black Panthers to her graduation from San Francisco State. War correspondent and writer Wallace Terry’s path-breaking Bloods (1984) brings us memories and life-stories of African Americans deployed to Vietnam. Pulitzer poet Yusuf Komunyakaa’s Dien Cai Dau (1988) offers us a powerful and lyrical lens on both the war and the Washington memorial. We examine songs of protest and other forms of musical expression ranging from Jimmy Cliff’s Letter from Vietnam to Sammy Davis Jr.’s 1972 tour of South Vietnam.  We consider the roles and representations of African American forces and peace activists in Apocalypse Now, Dead Presidents,Tropic Thunder, Butler and Selma. Our other sources include the speeches and writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Stokely Carmichael; the voice of “Hanoi Hannah,” whose radio broadcasts targeted African American troops in Vietnam, and war era cartoons, comics and photography. Thanks to the generosity of the author and a grant from the Freshman Seminar Program, all students on this course will receive a complementary copy of Virgin Soul.   The seminar will include class visits by Judy Juanita and by theatre & performance studies graduate student, Paige Johnson.

Grading is weighted at 50% for active and prepared participation in class discussion; 10% for one fifteen-minute oral presentation on a class topic; and 40% for a written, audio, visual or audio-visual assignment of your own design (such as an oral history, a photographic essay, a short story, or a short film), to be determined in consultation with the instructor.