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.

Principal Areas of Research Focus

War and Society
U.S. Foreign Relations
Migration Studies
Human Rights

Education

Ph.D., University of New Hampshire
M.A., University of New Hampshire
B.A., State University of New York at Fredonia

Professional Roles

Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
Society for Military History
American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians

Awards and Honors

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

Publications

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)

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