Archives de catégorie : Thèses / PhD

Claire Edington – “Beyond the Asylum: Colonial Psychiatry in French Indochina, 1880-1940” [PhD diss.]

Munch_thescream[ndlr] Annonce sur le Vietnam Studies Group (VSG) de la récente soutenance de thèse de doctorat (PhD) de Claire Edington en Sciences sociomédicales à l’Université de Columbia. Titre de la thèse : “Beyond the Asylum: Colonial Psychiatry in French Indochina, 1880-1940”, une histoire inédite de la société indochinoise vue sous l’angle de la psychiatrie.

Claire’s dissertation, “Beyond the Asylum: Colonial Psychiatry in French Indochina, 1890-1954 [1880-1940],” is the first book length study of the history of psychiatry in Vietnam. It looks beyond the asylum to consider how psychiatry in French Indochina expanded the reach of the late colonial state while working to redefine the relationship between the state and its subjects. The project examines the movements of patients in and out of psychiatric care as a way to better understand how notions of normality and abnormality were produced in negotiations between experts and families and between colonial bureaucrats and colonial subjects. It aims to reorient the colonial history of medicine and public health away from the focus on expert discourses and medical institutions and towards their entanglements with other kinds of colonial projects and indigenous forms of knowledge.

Source : Sociomedical Sciences PhD – Columbia University

Voir la page de l’auteure : Columbia University

Illustration : « Le Cri » d’Edvard Munch.

Tuan Hoang: Ideology in Urban South Vietnam, 1950-1975 [PhD diss.]

[ndlr] Signalement d’une thèse de doctorat d’histoire soutenue le 26 mars 2013 à l’Université Notre-Dame (Indiana, Etats-Unis). Félicitations à Tuan Hoang pour ce travail qui apporte une pierre supplémentaire au renouveau des études sur la République du Viêt-Nam (Sud).

FDC_Struggle&Development

 Cliquez sur l’image pour l’agrandir (source: Manh Hai Photo Gallery)

Hoang, Tuan: Ideology in Urban South Vietnam, 1950-1975

This dissertation addresses the subject of noncommunist political and cultural ideology in urban South Vietnam during 1954-1975. It contributes to the historiography of the Vietnam War, specifically on the long-neglected Republic of Vietnam (RVN) that has received greater attention in the last decade. The basic argument is that the postcolonial ideological vision of most urban South Vietnamese diverged greatly from that of the Vietnamese communist revolutionaries. This vision explains for the puzzling question on why the communist revolutionaries were far more effective in winning the minds and hearts of Vietnamese in countryside than in cities. At the same time, this vision was complicated by the uneasy relationship with the Americans.

The dissertation examines four aspects in particular. First is the construction of anticommunism: Although influenced by Cold War bipolarity, anticommunism in urban South Vietnam was shaped initially and primarily by earlier differences about modernity and post-colonialism. It was intensified through intra-Vietnamese experiences of the First Indochina War.

The second aspect is the promotion of individualism. Instead of the socialist person as advocated by communist revolutionaries, urban South Vietnamese promoted a bourgeois petit vision of the postcolonial person. Much of the sources for this promotion came from the West, especially France and the U.S. But it was left to urban South Vietnamese writers to interpret and promote what this person ought to be.

The third one concerns the development of nationalism. Urban South Vietnam continued to uphold the views of nationalism developed during late colonialism, such as the elevation of national heroes and the essentialization of Vietnamese civilization. Noncommunist South Vietnamese urbanites were influenced by ethnic nationalism, although they also developed the tendency to look towards other newly independent nations for nationalistic inspiration and ideas about their own postcolonial nation.

The last aspect has to do with the relationship with Americans: The views of urban South Vietnamese on the U.S. were generally positive during the early years of the RVN. But there was also wariness that burst into resentment and anti-Americanism after Washington Americanized the war in 1965. The dissertation looks into two very different urban groups in order to extract the variety of sources about anti-Americanism.

Source : University of Notre-Dame

Table of contents :

  • Acknowledgments – iii
  • Introduction Urban South Vietnam in the American Experience and Historiography – p. 1
  • Chapter One: Vietnamese Communism and Anticommunism Until 1954 – p. 48
  • Chapter Two: The Critique of Communism in Urban South Vietnam – p. 99
  • Chapter Three: Individualism in Urban South Vietnam: Background and Context – p. 168
  • Chapter Four: The Promotion of “Learning To Be Human” – p. 222
  • Chapter Five: The Development and Continuity of Nationalism – p. 334
  • Chapter Six: Perceptions of the U.S. Before the Americanization of the War – p. 408
  • Chapter Seven: The Roots and Growth of Anti-Americanism – p. 464
  • Epilogue – p. 515
  • Bibliography – p. 523