SLIS Commons
4207 Helen C. White Hall
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Derek Seidman is a PhD candidate in history at Brown University, winner of the 2008-2009 James P. Danky Fellowship (http://slisweb.lis.wisc.edu/~printcul/fellowship.html). He has a long standing interest in the history of social/protest movements in the US, especially during the 1960s.

Derek’s dissertation research, "The Unquiet Americans, examines the history of Vietnam era GI dissent. Using a variety of original sources and oral histories, he looks at the issues that dissident troops rallied around, how they organized and articulated their grievances, the success and failures of their efforts, and the impact that troop dissent had on the military. From organizing around issues of civil liberties, anti-racism and protesting the military hierarchy and war policies, to forming GI coffeehouses and newspapers, Vietnam era soldiers and their allies built a widespread but decentralized movement that challenged conventional military policies and decorum and gave strategic leverage to the broader antiwar movement. Other forms of GI unrest and revolt-- less overtly political, less organized, but more frequent-- also took their toll on military morale and effectiveness. Derek's project aims to illuminate this significant yet largely understudied story, to understand it on its own terms while also placing it in the larger context of postwar American history.

Co-sponsored by the Center for the History of Print Culture, the School of Library and Information Studies, the Department of History, and the Print Culture Society.