About this Event
Elisa Tamarkin on the fall of Saigon and the end of an era in war reporting with special guest Dean Deborah L. Nelson
How does it feel to recognize a historical ending while still living through it?
Named one of LitHub’s most anticipated books of the year, Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon reconstructs the final days of the Vietnam War through the papers of the author’s stepfather, the Chicago Daily News Saigon bureau chief, who filed the last American correspondent’s report as Saigon fell in 1975. Social historian Elisa Tamarkin connects this personal history to the changing culture of war correspondence and the decline of the city newspaper, offering a meditation on how we understand, and record, the end of an era.
Tamarkin will situate the evacuation of Saigon in the mindset of the 1970s, psychologies of belief and defeat, existentialist philosophy, and the ongoing problem of raising political consciousness around world events, even when we have access to all the information we ever need to know.
Guest Interlocutor: Deborah L. Nelson
Dean of the Arts & Humanities Division Deborah L. Nelson will join Tamarkin for a special conversation following Tamarkin’s presentation, bringing her own work in twentieth-century American culture and politics to questions of history, memory, and journalism.
Presented in partnership with the University of Chicago Press.
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.
Event venue & nearby stays
Seminary Co-op Bookstores, 5751 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, United States
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