David Hunt

Ph.D., Harvard University

Areas of Special Interest
The Vietnam War and 20th-century Vietnam; peasant studies; the French Revolution and French social history; politics and culture; world history in the early-modern period

Teaching
In spring 2009, I will be teaching History 345 and History 357.

Current Research
My current research is on everyday life in the villages of the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War.  My book Vietnam’s Southern Revolution (UMass Press, 2008) is part of a larger attempt to write a social history of the war. It includes chapters on peasants and the urban/rural divide; the concerted uprising of 1959-1960; utopianism and violence of the popular movement; generational and gender conflicts at village level; the 1965 escalation and subsequent scattering of the rural population; quotidian encounters between Vietnamese and Americans; disruptions in conceptions of time and space; and the dual parentage of the Tet Offensive.  Ethnography of Revolution (in progress) explores relations between the Vietnamese Communist Party and a peasantry animated by modernist currents that coincided with and diverged from party blueprints.  The text includes discussion of household economies and the interplay between customary and monetized forms of exchange; religious practice; land issues and struggles; oral, scribal, written, and electronic communication; and other aspects in line with an “ethnographic” approach to the events of the 1960s.  

Contact Information

Office: McCormack 4-641

Phone: 617-287-6873

E-mail: david.hunt@umb.edu

Office Hours for Spring 2009

MWF 12:00-1:00

A Note on Classroom Participation

CV