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Pacifism and Dissent

This guide is intended to provide useful resources to faculty and students researching nonviolent resistance movements and political repression in the Vietnam War Era.

Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War

Vietnam television

The Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War Collection is housed in the Department of Special Collections in the Connelly Library.  It is the largest collection of literary and creative works on the Vietnam War in the world; comprising over 20,000 books of fiction and poetry together with more than 2,000 films and documentaries, and over 1,000 non-print items including music and artwork. 

The Vietnam Collection has been growing for over twenty-five years under the curative direction of John S. Baky, University Librarian Emeritus.

Strengths of the Collection include:

  • Films and documentaries 
  • Protest poetry and literature
  • Music and the Vietnam War
  • Magazines and newspapers from the era
  • Printed ephemera, posters and realia

 

Contact

For research assistance, please contact:

Heather Willever-Farr, PhD, MA

Special Collections Librarian

willeverfarr@lasalle.edu

Primary Sources

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The Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War Collection contains primary sources related to protest movements.

 "Primary sources are original records created at the time historical events occurred or well after events in the form of memoirs and oral histories. Primary sources may include letters, manuscripts, diaries, journals, newspapers, speeches, interviews, memoirs, documents produced by government agencies such as Congress or the Office of the President, photographs, audio recordings, moving pictures or video recordings, research data, and objects or artifacts such as works of art or ancient roads, buildings, tools, and weapons. These sources serve as the raw material to interpret the past, and when they are used along with previous interpretations by historians, they provide the resources necessary for historical research." 

This definition come from the American Library Association's site: Using Primary Sources on the Web .  This is a great site to check to help you evaluate whether the information you find is a primary or a secondary source.

 

Video Highlight

Rebels with a cause [videorecording]

Summary: 

Uses archival footage and interviews with activists involved to trace the history of Students for a Democratic Society through the 1960's. Growing out of student involvement with the black civil rights movement in the South, SDS grew quickly with the escalation of the war in Vietnam. 

Subjects:

Students for a Democratic Society (U.S.) -- History -- 20th century

Student movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century

Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Protest movements -- United States

Peace movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century