Jackson School Alumna Elizabeth Becker has received the From the publisher, Public Affairs:
Kate Webb, an Australian iconoclast, Catherine Leroy, a French daredevil photographer, and Frances FitzGerald, a blue-blood American intellectual, arrived in Vietnam with starkly different life experiences but one shared purpose: to report on the most consequential story of the decade. At a time when women were considered unfit to be foreign reporters, Frankie, Catherine, and Kate challenged the rules imposed on them by the military, ignored the belittlement of their male peers, and ultimately altered the craft of war reportage for generations.
Elizabeth Becker in Kampuchea in 1978
Becker has remained a friend of the University of Washington over the years. In 2007 she began donating photographs and research notes from her trip to Democratic Kampuchea in 1978. These items now form the Elizabeth Becker Cambodia and Khmer Rouge Collection, housed in the UW Libraries’ Special Collections. The Becker Collection has since been used in a community outreach project led by Jenna Grant, and an award-winning library installation, The Age of the Kampuchea Picture.
In February 2021 researchers and Becker herself joined Librarian Judith Henchy in an exploration of Southeast Asia collections at the UW Libraries. Watch Opening the Archives: Southeast Asia Collections at the UW Libraries on the Southeast Asia Center’s YouTube channel.
