In the mountainous borderlands where Vietnam, Laos, and southwest China converge, tracing the past is never a straightforward endeavor. Here, memory is entangled in layers of political sensitivity, cultural silence, and the afterlives of revolution. In these regions, local communities may avoid recounting history altogether—out of caution, trauma, or resistance—while official narratives and heritagization efforts shape and sometimes obscure the ways the past is expressed.

Chasing Traces: History and Ethnography in the Uplands of Socialist Asia is the first volume to grapple head-on with these tensions, offering a rare and timely contribution to the study of memory, history, and ethnographic research in this complex region. Drawing on the reflections of a dozen scholars with decades of experience in the highlands of Vietnam, Laos, and China, the book poses urgent questions: How do researchers access local knowledge about the past in politically sensitive contexts? How is history performed in rituals, speech, and silences? What methodological and ethical challenges arise when working with oral traditions, fragile archives, and contested memories?

The chapters in Chasing Traces do not claim to present a seamless historical account. Instead, they document the messy, often uncertain process of research in places where history is lived and remembered in ways that resist both national frameworks and Western academic categories. With deep attention to context, the contributors reflect on archival silences, local storytelling, collaboration with community members, and the impact of surveillance and state narratives on their fieldwork.

Crucially, the book makes a case for a critically reflexive approach to historical ethnography—one that values the backstage, the partial, the whispered. It speaks to scholars across disciplines who are navigating the blurred lines between anthropology and history, and it offers a practical and theoretical guide for doing research in constrained environments, whether due to political instability, violence, or global disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic.

By centering the experiences of both researchers and communities, Chasing Traces challenges dominant assumptions about what counts as history and how it can be written. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Southeast Asia, minority studies, oral history, and the ethics of knowledge production in post-revolutionary and postcolonial settings.

Thanks to the University of Hawai‘i Press, Chasing Traces is available as an open access resource. Readers can access the full book for free at: https://manifold.uhpress.hawaii.edu/projects/chasing-traces.

Digitizing Việt Nam is pleased to share the latest announcement from the 15th Engaging With Vietnam Grand Event, a major international conference that will take place from 10–13 December 2025 in Hanoi, Vietnam, in collaboration with the School of Interdisciplinary Sciences and Arts, Vietnam National University Hanoi (SIS-VNU Hanoi).

This year’s theme: “Knowledge Production, Creative Industries, Education, and the AI Age in Vietnam: Looking Back and Moving Forward” invites scholars, artists, educators, and innovators to critically reflect on Vietnam’s dynamic intersections between knowledge, creativity, and technology.

Full conference details and proposal submission instructions are available at: https://engagingwithvietnam.org

Key Dates

• Proposal Submission Deadline: 31 July 2025
• Notification of Acceptance: 15 August 2025

We encourage researchers and practitioners across disciplines to contribute to this exciting milestone in the Engaging With Vietnam journey.
Please help us circulate this information widely!

For further updates, follow Engaging With Vietnam and join us in Hanoi this December as we explore the past and future of Vietnam’s intellectual and cultural landscapes.

Fifty years ago, the United States lost a war to a country that few Americans could find on a map; in the intervening decades, however, more has been written on the Vietnam War than most of America’s other conflicts. Why?

On the semi-centennial anniversary of the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) set out to answer that question by mounting a profound and moving three-day symposium. It commemorated not one milestone, but two—the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the 30^th anniversary of U.S.-Vietnam reconciliation.

Presented in partnership with the Journalism School, Columbia Global, and the School of the Arts, 50-30: From War to Peace in Vietnam and the United States (April 30-May 2, 2025) was one of the most high-profile, international commemorations of these milestones outside of Vietnam. By convening an extraordinary group of historians, writers, artists, activists, and filmmakers, as well as diplomats and military veterans from both countries, the symposium addressed the legacies of the war in Vietnam, particularly from perspectives south of the 17th parallel; the long road to reconciliation and the future of the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership; and the power of arts and culture to heal the wounds of war and promote peace in America and Vietnam today.

The four organizers, Columbia professors Tony Bui (School of the Arts and WEAI artist-in-residence), Lien-Hang Nguyen (History and WEAI director), John Phan (East Asian Language and Cultures), and Duy Linh Tu (Journalism), are Vietnam War refugees, or hail from the generation that fled Saigon in the 1970s. Reflecting on this anniversary, Nguyen said, “As a historian of the Vietnam War and co-founder of Global Vietnam Studies (GVS) at Columbia, the semi-centennial forced me to reckon with the tragedy of the past and how far we’ve come since 1975.”

Phan acknowledged the dual nature of the April 30th anniversary: “It is a day of well-deserved joy for millions of Vietnamese, of pride and of celebration. But for millions of other Vietnamese,” he continued, “it is a day of loss, grief, and trauma.” Billed as an integral part of Nguyen’s Global Core lecture course, The Vietnam War: A Special 50th Anniversary Edition, the conference attracted not only hundreds of students from the course, but also WEAI community members and those whose lives were touched by the Vietnam War.

The Wounds of War Will Heal

In the opening panel at Pulitzer Hall, New Histories of the Republic of Vietnam and the South Vietnamese Diaspora, historians delved into the latest research on the 30-year conflict, which ended with the fall of Saigon. Based on the recently published, three-volume Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, for which Nguyen was the general editor, the panel offered new directions from South Vietnam, the side most often overlooked in the Hanoi-and-Washington-centric histories. Combined with the subsequent panel featuring GVS co-founder Phan, along with literary scholars and critics dedicated to South Vietnamese literature, the message was: “The real civil war has ended. The wounds of war will heal. Successive generations are ready to rewrite a future history.”

But the story of the Vietnam War has an impact beyond historiography and literature: Contemporary Vietnamese-American politics is profoundly shaped by the past. Another panel, From the Fall of Saigon to Political Participation in the U.S., brought the diaspora narrative into the present day, as Tu engaged his panelists in an exploration of why many Vietnamese Americans, relative to other Asian Pacific islanders, tend to skew conservative in their politics. “The shadow cast by the fall of Saigon endures,” Tu said, “as intergenerational trauma and socioeconomic factors continue to influence Vietnamese political views in the United States.”

The keynote reception included a conversation between Bui and legendary Vietnamese-American actress Kieu Chinh, who regaled the audience with highlights of her career, which shows no signs of flagging after nearly 70 years. Photographs of Chinh attending film festivals with Chiang Kai-shek and Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune in the 1960s, and with Robert Downey Jr. in 2024, gave evidence of a perennial glamour. Chinh also discussed the hardships imposed by her abrupt exile from Vietnam in 1975, as well as her later professional triumphs like The Joy Luck Club and the recent HBO adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel, The Sympathizer.

Statecraft Takes Center Stage

Statecraft took center stage on Day Two with the program, From Enemies to Friends. WEAI Senior Advisor Thomas Vallely anchored discussions that explored the past, present, and future of U.S.-Vietnam relations. Vallely, along with another WEAI advisor, Chinh Chu, steered two panels that included current Vietnam ambassadors to the U.S., Nguyen Quoc Dzung, and to the United Nations, Dang Hoang Giang, as well as two former U.S. ambassadors to Vietnam, David Shear and Daniel Kritenbrink. They all reflected on the history of U.S.-Vietnam reconciliation and the future of the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.

Branching beyond bilateral relations, Wafaa El-Sadr, who wears many hats at Columbia, chaired Lessons from U.S.-Vietnam Reconciliation: Roadmap for the World. This panel, which featured former Vietnam Ambassador to the UN Dang Dinh Quy, assessed whether the restoration of ties between the one-time combatants offers a viable model for the rest of the world.

The Cathartic Power of the Arts

No commemoration of the end of the Vietnam War would be complete without addressing what is perhaps the most-watched documentary on the conflict: Ken Burns’s The Vietnam War, a fixture of Nguyen’s seminars on the war. Vallely and Burns had invited members of the team who made the documentary, including co-director Lynn Novick and co-producer Ho Dang Hoa, to discuss the making of the film. The conversation elicited heartfelt testimonials from audience members of all ages—undergraduates to veterans—who described the powerful experience of watching the documentary.

Day Three highlighted two panels—Conversations Left Unsettled: Healing the Wounds of War, and Cinema, War, and Conscience—under the direction of Bui. Tapped to curate a special collection of Vietnam War movies for the Criterion Channel, Bui is adamant that Hollywood and the U.S. must not be the only voices of the cinematic Vietnam War narrative. “This anniversary is a time to reflect, not just remember,” Bui said. “I hope to present a more layered, human representation from all sides of the conflict.” Bui tried to promote a more nuanced understanding of a country too long perceived by outsiders through the lens of conflict, with the help of poet and novelist Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai—whose 2020 novel, The Mountains Sing, became an international bestseller—and Peter Steinhauer, an American photographer who has lived and worked in Vietnam for more than 30 years.

At the start of the final panel, Bui asked, “Can cinema remember what history forgets?” Vietnam Ambassador Giang’s response was a resounding yes, as his opening comments emphasized the Vietnam government’s support of the arts to promote greater understanding on both sides of the former conflict. School of the Arts Dean Sarah Cole echoed this sentiment by focusing on the importance of art in times of turbulence and war. In a talk between Bui and Phillip Noyce, the two filmmakers gave concrete examples of how movies can rescue the past from the dustbins of history.

“By highlighting and shaping our understanding of the past, and the responsibilities involved,” Bui said, “this isn’t just about writing history—it’s about memory, and memory shifts depending on who’s telling the story.”

A slideshow, complete lists of participants, and additional information about the 50-30 conference are available on the Weatherhead East Asian Institute’s website, and a complete playlist of 50-30 videos is available to stream on its YouTube channel.