Talking about Service: The Concept of Duty from Ancient Rome to WWII and Vietnam.

FAIN: AV-279598-21

Emory University (Atlanta, GA 30322-1018)
Henry Carl Bayerle (Project Director: October 2020 to present)

A graduate course to prepare Emory students to lead discussions for veterans, followed by their facilitation of four parallel discussion series on the experiences of war read through The Aeneid and selected works on the Vietnam War.

Emory University proposes to organize a program of discussion groups that will meet five times. In Talking about Service, participants will explore aspects of the concept of duty from wars in ancient Rome to World War II and Vietnam through a close reading of Virgil's Aeneid, transcriptions from interviews of veterans collected over the past ten years in Georgia, and other historical documents. They will also discuss readings from the anthology Standing Down: From Warrior to Civilian and Bloods: Black Veterans of the Vietnam War: An Oral History by Wallace Terry. A discussion leader preparation program will draw on the expertise of Emory faculty. A distinctive feature of this application is the institutional context, which includes a vibrant Humanities Center and significant relationships with regional Veterans Administration services, the Centers for Disease Control, and an extensive network of health and wellness programming designed specifically for veterans.