Vietnam Experience

Traditional teaching of history focuses on facts and dates, but does little to spark student interest.  Project LOCAL (Learning Our Community’s American Lore) attempted both to connect students to the history of their local community and to teach history by allowing students to “do history” in a way that was analogous to the research and analysis performed by professional scholars.

The final step in the work of the professional historian is the publication of their findings in the public sphere.

The exhibition represented that public presentation for this history project, an examination of the community of Somerville, Massachusetts, in relation to its participation in the Vietnam War. The important questions that were asked, and answered, in the course of this project included “How did the war in Vietnam impact the people of Somerville?” and “What kinds of attitudes towards the Vietnam War were expressed in public and in the local media?”  The original research, oral history interviews, and other discoveries that were presented here were all performed by the Somerville High students. Likewise, all views expressed or implied and any conclusions that were reached were the result of the analysis performed by the student researchers.

After the project was completed and the school year ended, a group of students who participated in this special program spent three days designing and installing the exhibit, with the aim of sharing their research project with you, the Somerville Museum community and audience.

From the Ashes of the American War:  Vietnam in the Eighties 

In the mid-1980's, photographer Marcus Halevi accompanied several groups of American veterans who felt compelled to revisit the scenes of their armed service one decade after the end of the war in Vietnam --known to the Vietnamese as The American War.  From the Ashes of the American War:  Vietnam in the Eighties featured 22 new black and white prints selected from photographs taken by Halevi during his journeys. Halevi's images provided a rare and far-ranging look at Vietnam in the mid-1980’s, including scenes of family life, industry, farming, and transportation. Presented in conjunction with the Somerville Museum's Project LOCAL exhibit featuring Somerville High School students' study of Somerville during the Vietnam War, this group of photographs focused especially on the generation of Vietnamese coming of age in the years immediately following the war who were attempting to forge a new life in a changing society. Halevi's photographs depicted both the horrors of war and the resilience of the Vietnamese people and testified to the ongoing recovery of Vietnam from its years of conflict with western nations.