Bridging the Civil-Military Gap: What Happens When Soldiers Become Civilians Again?

FAIN: AV-286734-22

University of Missouri, Kansas City (Kansas City, MO 64110-2235)
Rebecca Best (Project Director: October 2021 to present)

A program to train and mentor 12 student veterans as discussion leaders for a 120-student undergraduate course on narratives of war and the relationships between civilian societies and their military communities. 

Our program will focus on the ways veterans and others have translated experiences of war into novels, memoirs, songs, and films; the challenges of accurately representing these experiences; and the crucial ways that narrative can connect civilian and military communities. The program’s three components are: (1) the recruitment and initial training of student veterans as supplemental instructors (SIs) in cooperation with UMKC’s At Ease Zone, the Missouri Institute for Defense & Energy (MIDE), and the ICSI, (2) an interdisciplinary course facilitating a holistic examination of military-civilian relationships across time and culture, with emphasis on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Argentina’s Dirty War, and (3) a series of follow-up meetings with the SIs aimed at processing and integrated lessons learned and preparing for the following year’s program.