Dr. Lisa Leitz, Dr. Alex Vernon, and Dr.
Michael Sprunger led students on a yearlong
exploration of issues of peace, war & memory. The importance
of public memory of wars and attempts at peace is exemplified in the way
constructions of Vietnam peace protestors as anti-troop profoundly shaped the
discourse around the 2003 Iraq War, which eventually pushed even the peace
movement to adopt “support the troops” as an important slogan. The Crossing
included four main components:
Fall Break DC
Trip: During Fall
Break 2012 students visited Washington D.C. and nearby Civil War Battlefields.
They had tours of the war memorials on the National Mall, visited the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum and their archives, compared the battlefield
National Parks at Gettysburg and Antietam, and visited with peace activists and
a representative of the U.S. Institute of Peace. In Spring 2013, students also
met with several speakers brought to Hendrix to focus on war memory and creative
ways to build peace and reflected on these components.
LBST 300:
Dr. Leitz taught
this class in Spring 2012 with the help of Drs. Sprunger and Vernon. In
this class each student produced a work of original interdisciplinary research
that explores how people remember war and/or peace work, focused on a topic of
the student’s choice. The majority of the writing occurred during the capstone
seminar course in the spring. The presentation and paper based on this research
formed the majority of the grade for LBST 300, but there were several reflection
essays due based on Crossing experiences and additional readings in the area of
Peace, War, and Memory.
"Past
Obsessions: World War II in History and Memory"
Dr. Carol Gluck,
a renowned historian of Japan at Columbia University, gave a public talk at
Hendrix on Thursday, February 21. Drawing on examples from Europe, Asia, and
North America, her talk explored how public memory operates in contemporary
societies and how entrenched national war stories change—or do not change—over
time.
Warrior Writers
and Combat Paper Project: The Warrior
Writer Project assists veterans in literary expressions of the experiences, and
the Combat Paper Project helps Iraq and Afghanistan veterans turn their personal
war material, such as uniforms and manuals, into blank books for their literary
works (see images below). Drew Cameron, an Iraq war veteran; Jan Barry, a
Vietnam veteran; and Sara Nesson, a Oscar-nominated documentary film director,
participated in a series of events on their experiences with the projects,
exploring the relationship between literary expression and physical and
emotional recovery. During the weekend of April 17, Hendrix College and the
Arkansas Literary Festival hosted a warrior writers’ workshop, a papermaking
workshop, film screenings, and panels. Students assisted the faculty in the
logistics, preparation, and programming and wrote a reflective essay on the
experience. Click here for a video of the Hendrix-Murphy Foundation Panel
exploring the relationship between literary expression and physical and
emotional recovery from with Drew Cameron, an Iraq war veteran; Jan Barry, a
Vietnam veteran; and Sara Nesson, an Oscar-nominated documentary film director,
will participate in a panel discussion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lmr0KQqzZk&list=PLD1BB77D0256EF82C
Crossing
Learning Goals
1) Increase
knowledge about past and current wars and peace movements
2) Consider how
memory or our interpretation of past wars, peace movements and treaties, and
notions of heroism on the battlefield shape modern life
3) Understand how
literature and other cultural products shape our understanding of past and
present wars and attempts at peace
4) Develop a deep
interdisciplinary understanding of the formation and consequences of collective
and individual memories of peace and war
5) Become aware of
the living memory of past American wars and peace movements in the Washington,
D.C. area
6) Conduct a
significant research project on issues related to peace, war and
memory.