D. Alexis Hart and Roger Thompson offer rich academic inquiry into the
idea of "the veteran" as well as into ways that veteran culture has been
fostered or challenged in writing classrooms, in writing centers, and in
college communities more generally.
For good reasons, the rise of veterans studies has occurred within the
discipline of writing studies, with its interdisciplinary approach to
scholarship, pedagogy, and community outreach. Writing faculty are often
a point of first contact with veteran students, and writing classrooms
are by their nature the site of disclosures, providing opportunities to
make connections and hear narratives that debunk the myth of the
stereotypical combat veteran of popular culture.
Presenting a more nuanced approach to understanding "the veteran" leads
not only to more useful research, but also to more wide-ranging and
significant scholarship and community engagement. Such an approach
recognizes veterans as assets to the college campus, encourages
institutions to customize their veterans programs and courses, and leads
to more thoughtful engagement with veterans in the writing classroom.
About the CCCC Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) Series
In this series, the methods of studies vary from the critical to
historical to linguistic to ethnographic, and their authors draw on work
in various fields that inform composition--including rhetoric,
communication, education, discourse analysis, psychology, cultural
studies, and literature. Their focuses are similarly diverse--ranging
from individual writers and teachers, to classrooms and communities and
curricula, to analyses of the social, political, and material contexts
of writing and its teaching.
