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Sociologist Examines Military Peace Movement in New Book

CONWAY, Ark. (March 20, 2014) – Hendrix sociology professor Dr. Lisa Leitz’s first book Fighting for Peace: Veterans and Military Families in the Anti–Iraq War Movement was recently published by University of Minnesota Press.

Fighting for Peace tells the story of the role of veterans and their families in the military peace movement that opposed the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and shows how the war experiences of veterans and their families “motivated a significant number of them to engage in peace activism.”

According to Publishers Weekly, Fighting for Peace is “a credible book detailing a movement that works on behalf of the needs of war veterans in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has shifted its own emphasis to speaking out against future wars.”

More information on the book is available here.

Leitz is the director of Project Pericles at Hendrix and is married to a U.S. naval aviator who flew missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. She was a speaker on the Iraq War and military issues for the 2004 Kerry–Edwards presidential campaign.

Leitz will discuss the book at the Arkansas Literary Festival on April 25 and also at the Arkansas WAND meeting on May 6 at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion.

Next year, Leitz will teach the second iteration of the Peace, War, and Memory “Crossing,” an interdisciplinary course sequence with English professor Dr. Alex Vernon and history professor Dr. Michael Sprunger. Students take classes from each professor, as well as a seminar with all three, and complete undergraduate research and special projects. 

Founded in 1876, Hendrix College is a national leader in engaged liberal arts and sciences education. For the sixth consecutive year, Hendrix was named one of the country’s “Up and Coming” liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and World Report.  Hendrix is featured in the latest edition of Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges, as well as the 2014 Princeton Review’s The Best 378 Colleges, Forbes magazine's list of America's Top Colleges, and the 2014 Fiske Guide to Colleges. Hendrix has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For more information, visit www.hendrix.edu