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Key deadlines

Conference starts:

2014-04-27

Paper Registration by:

2014-01-31

Paper Acceptance Notification by:

2014-02-15

Website

Visit the conference website

Conference Description

**DEADLINE EXTENDED**
Abstracts now due by January 31; presenters will be notified by February 15.

This interdisciplinary conference, created by the Veterans Studies Group at Virginia Tech, will take place at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center to bring together multiple perspectives on the many issues surrounding veterans in society. Our goal is for the conference to create a multi-disciplinary, international scholarly community with its own calendar of events and digital presence. Topics we will consider are open, but this year, we are especially interested in research (completed or work in progress) that speaks to the theme of humanizing the discourse about veterans.

Topics may address but are not exclusively restricted to the following questions:

*When governments and the private sector offer services to veterans, they project identities on people they label “veterans.” In what respects are there blind spots or problematic assumptions in the existing research and service-delivery agendas that disadvantage some veterans?

*Who “counts” as a veteran? Have some kinds of service, experiences, needs, or potentials arbitrarily been privileged (or devalued) over others?

*How have veterans themselves made meaning of their military and civilian experiences?

*What do historical, comparative, and literary perspectives bring to our understanding of military service and the post-military experiences of veterans vis-à-vis their civilian societies? Conversely, in what respects might such “lessons” be spurious?

Finally, because this research area of veterans studies is broadly defined, we solicit research that

*Invites scholars and service providers – and veterans – to examine the experiences of military personnel and veterans from countries other than the United States, other wars than the recent American-led conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan, and other settings than active duty in hot conflicts;

*Discusses civilians whose experiences parallel and intersect those of wartime military veterans (e.g., diplomats, journalists, contractors in their various capacities);

*Analyzes veterans’ use of politics and civil society, not as clients with needs defined by service providers but as active participants;

*Analyzes representations of veterans in literature, film, social media, or other genres;

*Discusses or represents how veterans use literature, music, and other creative media, whether as creators expressing themselves or as audiences for whom those creations may have special value.

Please see our website for more information.