WHA Annual Meeting: Korea 2026

Panel Abstract
Vietnam: Borderlands, Revolutionary Propaganda, and Comparing of Coming of Age in Films on the Vietnam War and the Soviet War in Afghanistan

Modern Vietnam has long been a venue for the discussion of world history themes and processes. Some of these, borderlands, local agency, colonialism, anti-colonialism, revolutions and art in the service of revolutionary propaganda, and the human cost of war are the subjects treated in the panel. Ha Trieu Huy’s paper is a close look at the political spaces that must be filled as imperial system decline and the prospects of local agency to secure autonomy. John Michael Swinbank extends his work on Vietnamese revolutionary poster art to offer a close examination of how Vietnam’s unique nationalist-anti-colonial revolutionary experience makes the transition to a globalizing world. Marc Jason Gilbert suggests how two films can provide students with insight into how coming of age during events during the American War in Vietnam and the Soviet War in Afghanistan led to transformative experiences though tests their humanity, their allegiances, and their views of the imperial “other.”