Oct 28, 2016 | 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM | Studio Theatre

Dr. Sarah Foust Vinson, Ph.D.

Fact, Fiction, and the Power of Auto-fiction in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

As the study of auto-fiction gains attention, moving from its French origins to be explored in English-language contexts, the issues the genre raises about the relationship between memory and fiction call us to examine the connections between narrative and the way history and the self are constructed and understood.  Tim O’Brien’s 1990 collection of stories recounting his experiences of the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried, notably plays with concepts of truth, fiction, memory, and history.

In the text, which notes on the title page that it is “a work of fiction by Tim O’Brien,” the narrator, Tim O’Brien, shares his “story-truth” which he says is “truer sometimes than the happening-truth” (179). There are numerous reasons O’Brien gives for the story-truth being more true than the happening-truth, including the idea that story-truth captures “the exact truth as it seemed” (71), highlighting the limitations of perception when memories are encoded.  He also notes, “a true war story [is] just beyond telling” (71), suggesting the limitations of language to fully capture lived-experience.  But he also suggests that “a true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe” (78).  I am most interested in this final reason, since it brings up questions of the audience and purpose of the work, asking how an author can best bring his or her experiences to life for a reader or someone else trying to understand the past.  My essay, then, drawing on the work of memory theorists Leigh Gilmore and Paul John Eakin, examines how O’Brien’s text uses story-truth to relay his experiences in Vietnam, all the while calling readers to realize how memory and history are always tied up in narrative and story in both limiting but also potentially restorative ways.

Mr. Brendan Wright, Slated for a July PHD defence

Massacre, Manipulation, and the Construction of Victimhood:    The Case of the 1951 Kŏch'ang Incident

From February 9 1951 to February 11 1951, US-backed Republic of Korea (ROK) forces committed a grisly atrocity in the mountainous hamlet of Sinwŏn in Kŏch'ang county.  Dubbed the "Kŏch'ang Incident", the region was witness to a killing spree in which over 700 unarmed civilians, the majority of whom were woman, children, and the elderly, were summarily executed as part of a counter-insurgency campaign. While similar incidents were ubiquitous throughout the war, the Kŏch'ang incident received attention from the national and international media, which led to the convictions of the commanders responsible. These convictions, however, were overturned shortly afterward by the South Korean President Syngman Rhee.

Through an analysis of Korean and international media coverage and victims' testimonies, this paper addresses how the framing of this incident through the officially-sanctioned ideological prism of anticommunism worked to both define and distort the nature of this atrocity.  I demonstrate that the military's destruction of information, the silencing of survivor's voices, and the discursive framework of anticommunism worked to portray the incident as an isolated episode of military breakdown, rather than a function of deliberate government policy.  Through this process, a methodically plotted extermination over 700 civilians was recast as an illegal execution of 187 male "communist" suspects.  Further, from the media's perspective, the crime was portrayed as an offence against the Korean nation and the legal framework of democracy. Meanwhile, the actual victims were minimized, denied a voice, and portrayed as communist sympathizers.  Thus, the public discourse surrounding the 1951 trial worked to reinforce existing anticommunist binaries—cementing notions of worthy/unworthy victims and contributing to a broader "social death" suffered by thousands of Koreans suspected of carrying leftist sympathies in the early Cold War.

Dr. Alena Papayanis, PhD

The Renegotiation of America: "Vietnam" in the Gulf War

After 100 days of ground war in the Gulf and only 148 battle-related American casualties, the Gulf War became the shortest war in American history.  It followed less than 20 years after the end of the U.S.’s most controversial contemporary war, The Vietnam War.  This conference paper examines the relationship between these two wars, demonstrating the ways in which the public narrative of the Vietnam War helped to construct that of the Gulf War.    In turn, it examines how the narrative of the Gulf War further shaped the popular legacy of Vietnam within American culture.  What did it mean to look back at the Vietnam War during the Gulf War?  What were the consequences of the collision between Vietnam and Gulf War narratives?  In what ways were the Vietnam War’s effects on notions of masculinity and American national identity negotiated in this period, and with what effects?

The Gulf War had a complex relationship to the Vietnam War.  Some legacies from the Vietnam War were reflected in cultural attitudes towards both the Gulf War and the troops fighting there.  For example, this can be seen in response to the image of victimized veterans that came out of the Vietnam War.  In another sense, the Gulf War was a culmination and manifestation of patterns that became popular within national culture post-Vietnam.  In particular, and perhaps most significantly, there was an emphasis upon welcoming American veterans home from the Gulf.  And yet in a third way, the Gulf War also acted as a moment of national rehabilitation and transformation.  It recovered a nostalgic pre-Vietnam sense of national identity linked to the Second World War.  I will examine these relationships order to more fully understand how the Vietnam War has been, and continues to be, negotiated within contemporary American culture.

Biographies

Dr. Sarah Foust Vinson

Sarah Foust Vinson is an Assistant Professor of English at Cardinal Stritch University.  She teaches courses in Contemporary Literature, Women’s Literature, Nonwestern Literature, Science Fiction and Fantasy, African American Literature, and American Literature. She is currently working on projects related to contemporary women’s memoir, in addition to work in the field of peace and justice studies.

Publications:

"Liberation, Renewal, and the Re-Imagination of Self: Wild and Garlic and Sapphires." [co-authored with Susan Larkin]. Journal of South Texas English Studies 6.1 (May 2016). [Forthcoming].

“Inclusive Memory: The Power of Collective Remembering in Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place.” Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies 19 (July 2013). 1-15.

“Testimony for Survival: Story and Memory in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina.” Exegesis 2 (April 2013): 41-51.

Brendan Wright

Brendan Wright’s doctoral thesis, “Civil War, Massacres and the Politics of Memory in South Korea 1948-1961” will be defended at UBC in the near future. His MA, was entitled “Advertising America, Ignoring Vietnam, The USIS in South Vietnam, 1954-1960”. 

Recent articles include Raising the Korean War Dead: Bereaved Family Associations and the Politics of 1960-1961 South Korea", The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 40, No. 2, October 12, 2015.

Political Violence and the Problematics of Localized Memory: The Cheju 4.3 Peace Park and the Kŏch'ang Incident Memorial Park. Cross Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, March 2015.   

Brendan Wright has successful won numerous scholarships and academic prizes including Beyond the Korean War Fellowship (2014-Present) Research Institute of Korean Studies International Center for Korea Studies. Visiting Scholar (March 2014-May 2014) Consular Corps of BC Graduate Scholarship in International Relations (2009 and 2013) Alice H Sorila Memorial Scholarship in History (2012) Korean Foundation Fellowship in Language Training (2011-2012) Canadian Graduate Scholarship (2010-2013), and SSRCH.

Dr. Alena Papayanis

Alena Papayanis completed her PhD in History at the University of London, Birkbeck College in 2011 with doctoral funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.  She also received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Media Studies from the University of Western Ontario before beginning her postgraduate career in history.  Her research interests have focused on the contemporary cultural history of war within the United States. Her PhD examines how the Vietnam War was inflected in the Gulf War, specifically through constructions of the U.S. soldier figure, gender, and national identity.  She is currently teaching at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario.

Publications:

“‘The Veteran Problem’: Examining Contemporary Constructions of Returning Veterans,” in Mental Illness and Popular Culture, edited by Lawrence Rubin. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2011.

“Everybody’s Coming Back a Hero: Reflections and Deflections of Heroism in the Gulf” Journal of War and Culture Studies, vol. 3, issue 2 (Sept. 2010): 237-248.

Encyclopaedia of Women in American Military History, s.v. “The Gulf War.” ABC-CLIO.