THE VIETNAM WAR

Five-Week Course

Dates: Five Tuesdays, February 24–March 31 (no class March 17)
Time: 6–7:30 p.m.
Location: See Course Locations and Parking page
Course Fee: $130 (discounted to $104 for select groups)

Mark Lawrence, Ph.D., History, UT Austin

This course introduces participants to the complex and controversial history of the war in Vietnam between 1961 and 1975, taking special account of the latest evidence to emerge from Vietnamese, Chinese, and Soviet government archives. The five sessions will address five of the most contentious questions that have lingered since the American withdrawal from Vietnam and the communist victory there: What was the nature of the Vietnamese political and military movement that opposed first France and then the United States in the middle decades of the twentieth century? Why did U.S. leaders consider Vietnam so important to U.S. national security, to justify a huge commitment of American resources and lives? Was it feasible for the United States to establish a viable and enduring South Vietnamese state? Why did the United States fail to achieve its objectives in Vietnam? What was the impact of the Vietnam War on the United States, Vietnam, and the international order?

Mark A. Lawrence is Associate Professor of History at The University of Texas at Austin. He earned his B.A. at Stanford University and his Ph.D. from Yale University. He is author of The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (Oxford University Press, 2008) and Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005). Professor Lawrence is now at work on a study of U.S. policymaking toward the developing world in the 1960s. He teaches courses in U.S. history and American foreign relations, and he won the President's Associates Award for Teaching Excellence in 2004 from The University of Texas at Austin.

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