Participant Info

First Name
Hayley
Last Name
Hasik
Country
United States
State
MS Mississippi
Affiliation
University of Southern Mississippi
Website URL
Keywords
United States, war and society, Vietnam War, helicopters, military industrial complex, war and memory, cultural history, World War II, POW experiences
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
other credentials

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Hayley Hasik 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. 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. This project signified the beginning of Hayley’s interest in the helicopter war of the Vietnam War.

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.”

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 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, https://networks.h-net.org/node/12840/reviews/4082535/hasik-gallagher-traumatic-defeat-pows-mias-and-national-mythmaking.

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. https://balloonstodrones.com/2019/07/18/airwarvietnam-from-combat-to-cultural-icon-unraveling-the-legacy-of-the-helicopter-in-the-vietnam-war/.

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
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