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Hayley Hasik received her PhD from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2023. Hayley’s dissertation, “The Helicopter War: Unraveling the Myth and Memory of a Vietnam War Icon,” looks at the promotional culture of the helicopter industry and Army aviation to explore how the military-industrial complex and advertising made the helicopter ubiquitous in both combat operations and the popular memory of the Vietnam War. Helicopter advertising campaigns and corporations’ efforts to win military contracts were central to the creation of the Vietnam War as the “helicopter war.”

Immediately following graduation, Hayley spent a year as an Educator at the Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site in Denison, Texas, where she developed programs to share the history of the 34th President and the various chapters of his life with the public. In 2024, Hayley went to work for Army University Films as a historian, writer, and producer of documentary films developed for the Army. You can find the full catalog of Army University Films here.

Prior to her work at USM, Hayley received a dual Bachelor of Science degree in history and English with a minor in astronomy from Texas A&M University-Commerce. While there, Hayley and several of her peers started the East Texas War and Memory Project, an oral and public history project designed to collect, preserve, and share the stories of people affected by war. Her early emphasis was on World War II and the varied POW experiences in Germany, primarily the difference between officers and enlisted men. This was the foundation for Hayley’s work in public history broadly and oral history specifically. In 2015, Hayley started her master’s degree in history with an emphasis in public history at Stephen F. Austin State University. At SFA Hayley completed a thesis capstone project entitled “I’d Rather Be Forgotten Than Dishonored”: An Oral and Life History Project with a Vietnam Veteran. Hayley expanded her oral history experience through her work with the East Texas Research Center where she conducted over 100 interviews for projects related to University history, local community history, and veteran histories.

 

Recent Publications

Scholarly Articles

Hasik, Hayley Michael and Eric L. Gruver. “Warrior for Freedom and Souls: Navigator, POW, Minister.” War, Literature, and the Arts 28 (2016): 1-25.

Hasik, Hayley Michael, and Eric L. Gruver. “’He Missed, I Didn’t’: Tears of an American World War II POW.” Sound Historian 16 (2014): 31-43.

Gruver, Eric, Hayley Hasik, Austin Baxley, and Kyle Hackney. “Duty, Hope, Brotherhood: Stories from World War II, Home and Abroad.” Sound Historian 15 (2013): 45-61.

Book Chapter

Duchovnay, Gerald, Eric Gruver, Charles Hamilton, and Hayley Hasik. “Recasting the Past in the Personal Present: History, Film, and Adaptation.” In The Adaptation of History: Essays on Ways of Telling the Past, edited by Laurence Raw and Defne Ersin Tutan, 207-222. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2012.

Book Reviews

Review of The Dallas Story: The North American Aviation Plant and Industrial Mobilization during World War II, by Terrance Furgerson. Military Review, May 2024.

Review of Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys, by Mia Martin Hobbs. Journal of Arizona History 63, no. 2 (Summer 2022): 243-245.

Review of Traumatic Defeat: POWs, MIAs, and National Mythmaking, by Patrick Gallagher. H-Net Reviews, May 2019.

Public Scholarship

Hasik, Hayley Michael. “From Combat to Cultural Icon: Unraveling the Legacy of the Helicopter in the Vietnam War.” From Balloons to Drones (blog), July 18, 2019.

Weddle, Andrea, Hayley Hasik, and Jackson Dailey. “Redefining the Undergraduate: Using Oral History Projects to Promote Undergraduate Scholarship in the Archives.” Society of American Archivists Archival Outlook (January/February 2014): 3, 24.

Media Coverage

Social Media

@hayleyhasik

Country Focus

United States

Expertise by Geography

United States

Expertise by Chronology

20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

Material Culture, Military, Public History, Technology