Journeys for Peace and Liberation: Third World Internationalism and Radical Orientalism during the U.S. War in Vietnam

This article introduces a forthcoming book project that examines the international travels of American antiwar activists during the U.S. War in Vietnam. Specifically, it explores how going beyond the nation's borders fostered and solidified a sense of internationalism, a conviction of political solidarity, with Third World nations among U.S. radicals of varying backgrounds. This study builds on recent trends in Asian American history and contributes to the scholarship on social movements during the “long decade” of the 1960s by providing a transnational, racially comparative, and gendered analysis of political activism. It also introduces the concept of “radical Orientalism” to describe the ways in which Americans of varying racial backgrounds perceived, imagined, and understood Asia, its culture, and its peoples as sources of political inspiration.