East Carolina University : Research and Creative Achievement Week 2012
Generational Struggles and Identity Conflict Among Vietnamese Immigrants: Finding a Middle Ground, Bach Pham, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, 27858 Many post-war Vietnamese who immigrated to the United States at a young age have recently transitioned into parenthood. With this new position, these Vietnamese have begun to find themselves in the unexpected arrangement of becoming cultural brokers in their own homes, mediating relationships between older Vietnamese immigrants and Americans while also attempting to find a cultural balance for their children. This complicated new relationship has in turn immediately influenced traditional Confucian notions of filial piety - or one's respect and devotion towards elders - creating dynamic new reactions and realizations for this particular group due to the Western influences and experiences.
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This study aims to understand current perceptions of filial piety among a specific set of Vietnamese immigrants in the United States the 1.5 generation. Born and raised in Vietnam, yet assimilated in American culture through education and experience, the 1.5 generation faces great questions in terms of the maintenance filial piety for both the older and younger generations within their very own household. Drawing from interviews and surveys conducted with Vietnamese immigrants in the Carolinas, this paper explores the inner conflict faced by these individuals who are entrusted with the task of maintaining some semblance of traditional Vietnamese identity within a contemporary Western context. Main House, Slave Quarter, or Dependency?: Identifying the Structure in the Vault Field at Foscue Plantation, Amanda S. Keeny, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, 27858 Foscue Plantation is a nineteenth-century naval stores plantation in Jones County, North Carolina. From 2007 to 2011, archaeological excavations were conducted about 1000 yards east of the main house where the burial vault used by the Foscue family is located, and where a chimney fall was discovered in 2007. These excavations were geared toward determining whether the structure represented by the chimney fall was the location of the late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century original plantation house, a slave quarter, or a dependency of the house. The working hypothesis had been that the structure was the original plantation house; however, recent documentary research rules out this interpretation. Current excavations are reexamining the building as a possible slave or overseer’s residence.
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