Full Description
In today's volunteer military many recruits enlist for the educational benefits, yet a significant number of veterans struggle in the classroom, and many drop out. The difficulties faced by student veterans have been attributed to various factors: poor academic preparation, PTSD and other postwar ailments, and allegedly antimilitary sentiments on college campuses. In Grateful Nation Ellen Moore challenges these narratives by tracing the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans at two California college campuses. Drawing on interviews with dozens of veterans, classroom observations, and assessments of the work of veteran support organizations, Moore finds that veterans' academic struggles result from their military training and combat experience, which complicate their ability to function in civilian schools. While there is little evidence of antimilitary bias on college campuses, Moore demonstrates the ways in which college programs that conflate support for veterans with support for the institutional military lead to suppression of campus debate about the wars, discourage antiwar activism, and encourage a growing militarization.
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. Basic Training: Making the Soldier, Militarizing the Civilian 25
2. What They Bring with Them: Effects of Military Training on Student Veterans 43
3. Campus Veteran Support Initiatives 77
4. Veteran Self-Help: Embracing, Re-creating, and Contesting Gendered Military Relations 97
5. Spectral Wars and the Myth of the Antimilitary Campus 127
6. "Thank You for Your Service": Gratitude and Its Discontents 165
Conclusion 189
Notes 201
Bibliography 237
Index 253
