Bringing Them Home: Identifying and Remembering Vietnam War MIAs

FAIN: FZ-256468-17

Sarah Wagner
George Washington University (Washington, DC 20052-0001)

Researching and writing a book on forensic identification and public memorialization of U.S. service members Missing in Action (MIA) from the Vietnam War.

This book project examines the efforts to account for and memorialize U.S. service members Missing In Action (MIA) and presumed dead from the past century’s major conflicts, specifically the over 1,600 still missing from the Vietnam War. Stories from recovery missions in Southeast Asia, forensic scientific investigations, and decades-delayed homecomings help illustrate war’s destructive/generative nature and the obligations of care that arise through such a prolonged crisis of absence. Bringing Them Home also reveals important changes in how MIAs are commemorated, from everyday, small acts of remembrance to more public, monumental forms and spaces of memorializing the war and those who died waging it. In doing so, it presents a humanistic account of war and its legacy of remembrance that entwine the living with the dead in the project of national belonging.

Associated Products

Homecoming: MIA Accounting and the Vietnam War (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Homecoming: MIA Accounting and the Vietnam War
Author: Sarah Wagner
Abstract: Presented at the international conference, “Below Ground: Mass Grave Exhumations and Human Rights in Historical, Transnational and Comparative Perspective,” Center for Human and Social Sciences (CCHS), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), San Sebastian, Spain.
Date: 07/19/2018

Unsettled Memories, Unsettling Remains: The Missing and the Returned from the Vietnam War (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Unsettled Memories, Unsettling Remains: The Missing and the Returned from the Vietnam War
Author: Sarah Wagner
Abstract: Presented at the international conference, “The Sociopolitical Lives of the Dead,” Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands
Date: 11/01/2018

Bringing Them Home: The Politics and Symbolics of MIA Accounting (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: Bringing Them Home: The Politics and Symbolics of MIA Accounting
Author: Sarah Wagner
Abstract: Keynote lecture presented at the CultCommWar Workshop Four: American Wars, American Memory, Rothemere American Institute, University of Oxford
Date: 11/30/2018

2020 Winners of the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing and the Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing (Article)
Title: 2020 Winners of the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing and the Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing
Author: Julia Offen
Abstract: I am delighted to announce the 2020 winners of the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing and the new Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing. Despite the pandemic, there were no less than 87 entries, which is a new record high. There was no overlap between the awards (no one received both), though every first book was eligible for both awards. Books were judged on their quality of writing, depth of engagement with the material, and contribution to the field of humanistic anthropology and ethnographic genres. The Committee found the level of writing exceptional, which Victor and Edie Turner would have been very pleased with.
Year: 2020
Primary URL: http://sha.americananthro.org/2020/08/2020-winners-of-the-victor-turner-prize-in-ethnographic-writing-and-the-edie-turner-first-book-prize-in-ethnographic-writing/
Format: Journal
Publisher: American Anthropological Association

Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing (Article)
Title: Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing
Author: Julia Offen
Abstract: I am delighted to announce the 2020 winners of the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing and the new Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing. Despite the pandemic, there were no less than 87 entries, which is a new record high. There was no overlap between the awards (no one received both), though every first book was eligible for both awards. Books were judged on their quality of writing, depth of engagement with the material, and contribution to the field of humanistic anthropology and ethnographic genres. The Committee found the level of writing exceptional, which Victor and Edie Turner would have been very pleased with.
Year: 2020
Format: Journal
Publisher: American Anthropological Association

Prizes

Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing
Date: 11/8/2020
Organization: Society for Humanistic Anthropology
Abstract: 2020 Winners of the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing and the Edie Turner First Book Prize in Ethnographic Writing | Society for Humanistic Anthropology - sha.americananthro.org

What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War (Book)
Title: What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War
Author: Sarah Wagner
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=674988345
Primary URL Description: WorldCat entry (674988345)
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 674988345

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