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It is a pleasure to announce that Julie Osborn recently defended her dissertation Women, War, Vietnam: The Mobilization of Female Images, 1954-1978 and received her PhD in History at the University of Washington, Seattle, having worked with Profs. William Rorabaugh, Christoph Giebel, Susan Glenn, and Laurie Sears.[caption id="attachment_9011" align="aligncenter" width="450"] Nữ du kích Việt Cộng [/caption]Women, War, Vietnam: The Mobilization of Female Images, 1954-1978 proceeds with two deeply interwoven goals in mind: mapping the experience of women in the Viet Nam War and evaluating the ways that ideas about women and gender influenced the course of American involvement in Viet Nam.  Julie Osborn argues that between 1954 and 1978, ideas about women and femininity were crucially involved in impelling, sustaining, and later restraining American actions and prerogatives in Viet Nam.  The dissertation evaluates literal images such as photographs, film and television footage as well as images evoked by texts in the form of news reports, magazine articles, and fiction, focusing specifically on images that reveal deeply gendered ways of seeing and representing the conflict for Americans.  Some of the images Julie Osborn analyzes include a French nurse known as the "Angel of Dien Bien Phu," refugees regrouping to southern Viet Nam in 1954, the de facto "first lady" of the Republic of Viet Nam under Ngo Dinh Diem, Tran Le Xuan, a.k.a. "Madame Nhu," and female members of the National Liberation Front.  Juxtaposing images of American women, Julie Osborn also focuses on the figure of the housewife protesting American atrocities and the use of napalm in Viet Nam, and images wrought by American women intellectuals that shifted focus away from the military and toward the larger social and psychological impact of the war.Congratulations on this splendid achievement, Dr. Osborn!C. GiebelUW-SeattleSource : VSG (with kind authorization of C. Giebel).[caption id="attachment_8999" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Thanh Nữ Cộng Hòa © 1962 Life [/caption]&#160;