User:Vaohp/sandbox

About
The Vietnamese American Oral History Project (VAOHP) at the University of California, Irvine actively assembles, preserves, and disseminates the life stories of Vietnamese Americans in Southern California. The project contributes to expanding archives on Vietnamese Americans with the primary goal of capturing first generation stories for students, researchers, and the community. Launched in 2011, VAOHP is housed in the Department of Asian American Studies in the School of Humanities and collaborates with the UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Archive.

There are over one and a half million Vietnamese Americans in the United States, with the largest concentration of Vietnamese residing in Southern California. Since the 1970s, Vietnamese Americans have dramatically transformed Southern California’s demographics and landscape and this project aims to represent the diversity of their experiences.

Our objective is to capture the oral histories of first generation Vietnamese Americans who have memories of life in Vietnam, the Vietnam War, and the displacement and resettlement of refugees from Vietnam. VAOHP plays an instrumental role in documenting their histories and legacies in order to preserve their stories for future generations.

These audio-taped life stories (some are video-taped) include Vietnamese and/or English-language transcripts of the interviews, brief summaries, time logs, and photographs of narrators. Some narrators have also contributed additional materials such as their own photographs and documents to be preserved with their stories. Aligned with the purpose of training future generations of leaders, faculty train UC Irvine students to conduct oral histories in their courses, such as in Linda Trinh Vo’s Research Methodologies /Field Research class and Tram Le’s Vietnamese American Experience class. . These comprise a number of the “sub-collections” within VAOHP.

Dr. Linda Trinh Vo is the Director for VAOHP and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies. Tram Le is the VAOHP Associate Director. VAOHP Advisory Committee members include Dr. Vicki L. Ruiz, Professor, Department of History and Chair of Chicano/Latino Studies; Dr. James Kyung-Jin Lee, Chair and Associate Professor of the Department of Asian American Studies; Dr. Thuy Vo Dang, Archivist, Southeast Asian Archive & Regional History and Inaugural VAOHP Project Director (now titled Associate Director); Audra Eagle Yun, the UCI Libraries' Head of Special Collections; Christina J. Woo, Research Librarian for the Southeast Asian Archive; Kasey Ning, Department Manager, Department of Asian American Studies; and Daniel Do-Khanh, Esq., President, Vietnamese American Community Ambassadors (VACA) - UCI alumni chapter. The VAOHP is grateful for assistance by multiple staff from the UCI Libraries, including Mark Vega, Programmer; Matthew McKinley, Digital Projects Specialist; and Sylvia Irving, Graphic Designer.

We wish to thank Michelle Light, formerly UCI Libraries' Head of Special Collections, for her contributions to the digitalization of the interviews as well as Caroline McGuire, former Department Manager, Department of Asian American Studies.

The VAOHP also collaborates with individuals and organizations to gather and house previously completed and ongoing oral history projects. VAOHP is collaborating with the 500 Oral Histories Project by the Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation based in Texas by transcribing, translating, and digitizing their Southern California interviews. This partnership will further both our objectives of actively preserving Vietnamese American history.