Amanda C. Demmer
Amanda Demmer, Assistant Professor

Department of History
404 Major Williams Hall, 220 Stanger St.
Blacksburg, VA 24061
540-231-5331 | demmer@vt.edu
Amanda C. Demmer is an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech. Her research and teaching interests center on the boundaries between war and peace in American history. Her first book, After Saigon’s Fall: Refugees and US-Vietnamese Relations, 1975-2000, (Cambridge University Press, 2021), offers a new account of the postwar normalization of US-Vietnamese relations. The book argues that to understand the full scope of the normalization process one must center three major transformations of the late twentieth century: the reassertion of the US Congress in American foreign relations; the Indochinese diaspora and changing domestic and international refugee norms; and the intertwining of humanitarianism and the human rights movement. Her next project will examine the nebulousness of war and peace during the Cold War and beyond through an exploration of U.S. “normalization” policies.
- War and Society
- U.S. Foreign Relations
- Migration Studies
- Human Rights
- Ph.D., University of New Hampshire
- M.A., University of New Hampshire
- B.A., State University of New York at Fredonia
- Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
- Society for Military History
- American Historical Association
- Organization of American Historians
- 2019 Betty M. Unterberger Dissertation Prize, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Honorable Mention
- 2017 Fellow, Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, Summer Seminar in Statecraft and History
- Gerald R. Ford Scholar Award in Honor of Robert M. Teeter, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
Books
After Saigon's Fall: Refugees and US-Vietnamese Relations, 1975–2000 (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Journal Articles
“Trick or Constitutional Treaty?: The Jay Treaty and the Quarrel Over the Diplomatic Separation of Powers” Journal of the Early Republic, 35.4 (Winter 2015): 579-598
Book Chapters
“Forging Consensus on Vietnamese Reeducation Camp Detainees: The Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association and U.S.-Vietnam Normalization,” in Andy Johns and Mitch Lerner (eds.) The Cold War at Home and Abroad: Domestic Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy since 1945 (University of Kentucky Press, 2018)
Reference Essays
“U.S.-SRV Relations,” in The Oxford Reference Encyclopedia (ORE) in American History (Oxford University Press Online, September 2019)
Featured Books
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Select Media Mentions
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Article Item‘We can’t claim mission accomplished’: A long road for Afghan refugees , article
The New York Times, 8/12/22
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Article ItemWith Afghanistan’s fall, the U.S. confronts a moral necessity it faced before , article
Washington Post, 8/16/2021
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Article ItemLearn the lessons of Vietnam to help Afghan refugees , article
Forbes, 8/2/2021
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