Wartime Reminiscences: The Story of William R. Tanner’s Civil War Service

Veteran war stories are some of the most fascinating windows into the past that students of history can experience. With World War II veteran numbers quickly diminishing and the risk of these accounts of history being lost, the importance of collecting and passing on veteran stories to future generations is vital. Such was the case with those who fought in the Civil War. As the twentieth century approached, droves of veterans began disappearing from the pages of history. The need for those veteran stories from America’s bloodiest war to be recorded and published became not only important to the veterans themselves but also to students like myself who have a genuine interest in studying how the Civil War was remembered by its soldiers. [excerpt

No Longer Home

A father and his wife struggle to adapt to their son just home from the long War on Terrorism. Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit. Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers participants a twelve-week writing class customized for veterans and their family members, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences related to their military experience so the writer and readers may benefit from the stories shared

The effects of pictures on the order of accessing online war stories

Research on how people read news stories has shown that readers chose to read and access news stories associated with pictures that contained an element of attraction. Researchers have found that the emotional elements within the picture could also play a role. It is unclear how neutral human interest pictures influence readers to access news stories. Is the access process influenced by less emotive pictures or more human interest elements? These issues were explored in an experiment in which 24 students participated. The experiment compared similar news that was accompanied with a human interest picture, information graphic and without information graphic. The focus of the news stories was on war news which almost always contained human interest elements that could be neutral or emotion-laden. The experiment suggested that human interest pictures of war stories could be equally effective in attracting readers to read and remember the news stories

‘The violent destruction of solid things’: Elizabeth Bowen’s wartime short stories

Elizabeth Bowen’s introduction to the American edition of The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1944) explores the feeling of ‘lucid abnormality’felt by many during the Second World War; in this collection of short stories, Bowen offers a portrayal of London life when ‘[t]he violent destruction of solid things, the explosion of the illusion that prestige, power and permanence attach to bulk and weight, left all of us, equally, heady and disembodied. This paper focuses on three specific stories from the collection; these stories – ‘The Inherited Clock’ (where time is literally stopped), ‘The Demon Lover’ and ‘Happy Autumn Fields’ – demonstrate Bowen’s own fascination with temporal discombobulations, depicting in the latter two stories the ‘destruction of solid things’ where time is no longer fixed and where ghosts from the past displace time in order to appear in the present.  Drawing on these stories, this paper discusses Benson’s use of temporal disturbances in her wartime Gothic stories to explore the fears of many in London who did not know ‘who the dead were’ and for whom ‘the destruction of solid things’ leads to a ‘rising tide of hallucination' for those struggling to live in a world torn apart by war

Untold stories of Syrian women surviving war

Issue title: Sympathetic stereotypes: the Syrian Uprising in western media and scholarshipIn "I must save my life and not risk my family’s safety!”: Untold Stories of Syrian Women Surviving War, Alhayek provides several case studies of Syrian women whose lives were irreversibly changed as a result of the events that unfolded after March 2011. The stories of these women vividly illustrate how difficult it is to come up with a neat and easily accessible profile for the suffering of Syrian women. Yet, this is precisely what Western media, albeit sympathetic, has attempted to achieve. Stories on child brides being sold to wealthy old men from the Gulf, though on the surface highlighting the suffering that Syrian women have undergone, are shown by Alhayek to have grossly misrepresented not only Syrian women, who are in fact as complex and multi-faceted as their Western counterparts, but also Syrian families for being willing to take part in such arrangements in the first place. Through interviews with six Syrian women, Alhayek brings home the idea that our understanding of the Syrian Uprising must be based on stories that are collected from below rather than on stereotypes imposed from above. The case studies defy any simplified narrative that one may wish to impose on them. In one case study, for example, the army is directly responsible for killing civilians, while in the other the army is shown to have been very respectful of women, especially in the early phase of the Uprising.Publisher PD

Mary Yukari Waters. The laws of evening. Scribner, 2003

Mary Yukari Waters is an American Japanese-Irish author who, in her collection of stories The Laws of Evening, writes about Japanese culture, usually women’s experiences adapting to their lives in this culture. Many of the stories reflect the changes in culture that occurred during and after World War II. An overarching theme is that of the invasion of American culture in Japanese society as a result of the American occupation and America’s formulation of Japanese government and political structure at the conclusion of World War II

Color Red

A young veteran gets a call from Special Forces to come back to the Vietnam War. Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit

Perception vs. Reality: WWII Veterans are More Than Willing to Share their Stories

I created the Bristol Veterans History Project to record and preserve the stories from World War II and Korean War veterans in the local area. The attached paper and corresponding PowerPoint presentation were created for a presentation with Professor Debbie Mulligan in Washington, DC

The Eyes

A young soldier’s father and friends take him hunting, where he confronts the violence of the war behind him. Articles, stories, and other compositions in this archive were written by participants in the Mighty Pen Project. The program, developed by author David L. Robbins, and in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University and the Virginia War Memorial in Richmond, Virginia, offers veterans and their family members a customized twelve-week writing class, free of charge. The program encourages, supports, and assists participants in sharing their stories and experiences of military experience so both writer and audience may benefit