Supported by the National Endowment for Humanities Dialogues of the Experience of War program.
Catalog Description
This course studies the misunderstandings and feeling
of separation that often arise between military
veterans and their civilian communities in the wake of
war. Through an interdisciplinary framework (history,
literature, and political science), we will encourage
students to reframe experiences of war in wider
societal contexts and draw connections across time
and space. By focusing on military and civilian
relations, students will examine their own worldviews
and implicit bias in contrast to those of
servicemembers and veterans. Throughout this course,
students will analyze how servicemembers in three
different societies (the Americans in Iraq and
Afghanistan; the Aztec; and the military during the
Argentine “Dirty War”) have interacted with the civilian
populations that supported their efforts before, during,
and after engaging in combat. We will explore how any
military effort shapes relations between and within
civil and military communities. Using pictorial histories,
codices, novels, films, memoirs, songs, and
biographies, student-veteran discussion leaders will
reflect on their own military and reintegration
experiences (knowledge of self), while leading their
non-veteran fellow students in discussion of these
types of experience, non-veteran experiences with and
perceptions of veterans and servicemembers, and
other culturally different conflicts (knowledge of self,
awareness of others, and consciousness of society).
Discussion groups will discuss how those different
experiences inform the experience of military service
and engagement with the civic society as well as
implications of the civil-military gap for citizens in a
democracy.