Cody J. Billock
Program: Ph.D. in History
Field of study: Vietnam War
Advisor: Alec Holcombe
Degrees held: M.A. in History, San Diego State University, B.A. in History, San Diego State University
Research interests: My primary scholarly focus is on the history of the Vietnam War. My research is based on extensive archival research in Vietnam and international archives in France and the United States. My dissertation focuses on the city of Hue in Central Vietnam from 1945 to 1975.
Recent Accomplishments: In the past year, I received several academic grants. The Contemporary History Institute and the Graduate Student Research Fund provided me with funding to conduct research for my dissertation in France. In August and September 2023, I visited the Overseas National Archive (Les Archives nationales d'outre-mer) in Aix-en-Provence and The Defense Historical Service Archive (Le Service Historique de la D茅fense) in Vincennes. I also secured funding from the Contemporary History Institute to take one hundred hours of online Vietnamese-language lessons with my teacher at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Hanoi (USSH, Tr瓢峄漬g 膼岷 h峄峜 Khoa h峄峜 X茫 h峄檌 v脿 Nh芒n v膬n) over the 2023-2024 winter break. Lastly, the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Archive generously awarded me the Moody Grant to conduct a week-long research trip in September 2024 to the LBJ Presidential Archive in Austin, Texas for my dissertation project.
I also gave multiple academic presentations and was a guest on several podcasts. In March, I presented a dissertation chapter entitled 鈥淭he 1966 Central Upheavals: Politics & Protests in the RVN鈥 for the Ecole Francaise Extreme Orient (EFIO, The French School of the Far East). In April, I presented a paper entitled 鈥淭he Central Office of the South Document Series鈥 at the Vietnam-Centric Approaches to Vietnam鈥檚 Twentieth Century History Conference held at the University of California, Berkeley. In the spring, Dr. Brian Feltman and Dr. Bill Allison interviewed me on their podcast Military Historians Are People, Too! Similarly, Vietnam Veteran News invited me to interview Nguyen Van Marshall about her new book Between War and the State: Civil Society in South Vietnam, 1954-1975 for the forty-ninth anniversary of the fall of Saigon, which aired on April 30.
In the past year, my writings have been published in numerous outlets. In September 2024, the Spanish-language military history magazine Desperta Ferro Ediciones published two of my articles on the battle of Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive. The first article, Hue: la Conquista inesperada (Hue: The Unexpected Conquest), details the surprise Communist offensive and conquest of Hue city. The second article, La batalla por la ciudad imperial (The Battle for the Imperial City), surveys the reconquest of the city by the United States and South Vietnamese militaries. I also published several book reviews. In November 2023, the Journal of Military History published my review of Joe Parnor and Robert Dumor鈥檚 SOG Kontum: Top Secret Missions in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, 1968-1969. In January 2024, I wrote a second book review for the Journal of Military History on Nguyen Van Marshall鈥檚 aforementioned Between War and the State: Civil Society in South Vietnam, 1954-1975. H-Diplo also published my review of Nathaniel Moir鈥檚 article, To Each His Turn鈥 Today Yours, Tomorrow Mine: Fran莽ois Sully鈥檚 Turn in History in June, 2024.
One of the most rewarding experiences of the last year was being awarded a fellowship by the Society for Military History to attend their three-week-long Summer Seminar in Military History. The program, hosted at the Virginia Military Institute in July, brought together fourteen advanced doctoral students and junior scholars to Lexington, Virginia, for intensive training by senior military historians. The experience was both academically enriching and personally fulfilling due to the close-knit, supportive cohort of the scholars involved.