Anne Scahill is an American woman who served in a non-governmental organization in South Vietnam from 1970 to 1973 called the Vietnam Christian Service (VNCS).During that time she took many photographs (slides) and recorded information about those photographs.

The Virtual Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech now preserves these materials and has recently digitized the photographs and audio recordings separately. I decided to combine the two for easier viewing.

Anne Scahill actually created several “slideshows,” but I’ve only combined the audio and photographs from one of them here, a slideshow entitled “Women at Work in Vietnam,” and of course “Vietnam” to Scahill was “South Vietnam.”

The Virtual Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech also has a transcript of this audio recording which can be accessed here.

Scahill’s account of the lives of women in South Vietnam is fascinating for both what it records as well as for the way in which it records its information, for not only does Scahill provide an account of what was happening in/to the lives of women in the early 1970s in South Vietnam, but her information comes through an historically specific lens as well, the lens of a rather conservative, but nonetheless adventurous, 1970s-era American woman, with all of her sympathies, critiques and perspectives.