This “gulf” between civilians and their military counterparts to which Captain Maugham drew attention at the end of the Second World War is perhaps even more evident today in an era during which only 1 percent of the US population serves in the active military and only 7 percent are military veterans (Elliott, Gonzalez, and Larsen 2011, 282). Yet, as more veterans take advantage of the post-9/11 GI Bill and matriculate on college campuses in numbers not seen since the 1940s, we college writing instructors are increasingly likely to encounter opportunities to engage with student-veterans and to facilitate their transition...

We first crossed paths in a first-year composition (FYC) course. Angie, four months out of the navy and in her first university classes; Doug, a specialist in FYC pedagogy whose courses emphasized self-directed inquiry. On the first day, Doug asked the class what as writers they wanted to learn. Angie thought, “You don’tknowwhat we’re supposed to learn? Justtellus.” When asked a question, Doug often turned it back to the class with a “what doyouthink?” In discussions of scholarly readings, Angie waited for definitive “here’s-what-this-text-says” explanations that rarely came. Writing assignments were given as relatively...

Few things leave as powerful an impression as hundreds of soldiers, sailors, airmen, or marines in formation. Their thunderous “hooahs” create a flash bomb of sound, and their crisp rifle movements are identical and precise. The very nature of a member of the uniformed services in formation—the forward stare and rigid back at attention, the replication of exact angles of boots and the cupping of hands, and the way he or she sloped height of the formation—completely reflects this organization of discipline, rigidity, and uniformity. Over our respective careers, we have had many opportunities to be filled with...

In twenty-five years of teaching college writing at both four- and two-year institutions, I have encountered students—traditional age and nontraditional—whose life issues, singly or combined, impeded their success at school: academic unpreparedness, diagnosed and undiagnosed learning disabilities, unemployment and its attendant financial difficulties, substance abuse, family demands, a history of physical or mental abuse, and homelessness. However, over the past four years of teaching at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), I have seen the influx of individuals from a distinct demographic: US military veterans whose deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan has often left them with psychological,...

As colleges and universities establish composition courses comprised of cohorts of student-veterans, a parallel movement of “self-sponsored” community writing groups led by and for military veterans is forming across the country. Such groups serve as “sponsors of literacy,” what Brandt (2001, 19) refers to as “agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way.” These writing groups actively sponsor veterans by encouraging and supporting their efforts to write about and process their experiences in the military. Examples include Warrior...

In the passage above, “closer to home” seems to denote, for Shepherd Bliss, writing that is personal, intimate, and tied to his very sense of self. Bliss notes an almost visceral connection in hearing one’s name spoken aloud, some imprint left upon the conscious body by such a label. In changing this label, Bliss changed his life, granting himself “the peace of a shepherd, rather than the trauma of being called a warrior. I appreciate having a warrior inside and available, but I do not want it to be always leading me” (Bliss 2006, 22).

The ability to see bits...

Much of the conversation regarding how to meet the administrative, educational, financial, and medical needs of student-veteran populations has been aimed at pointing out the gaping absence of effective policies, procedures, organizations, support systems, and institutional measures. To further complicate the task of meeting these needs, veterans returning from combat are frequently diagnosed with the “signature wounds” of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEI) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OFI): traumatic brain injury (TBI) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Disability studies (DS) offers significant perspectives to this conversation, perspectives that are especially attuned to the (potentially) oppressive position of “disabled.” Student-veterans with “signature...

In April 2011, from “somewhere deep in the heart of Afghanistan,” came yet another viral music video remake by a group of deployed military servicepersons. The participating personnel gave their most intense gazes, worked their dance moves, and lip-synced along with Britney Spears in her hit song “Hold It against Me”—all against the backdrop of their Afghan landscape (“Hold It Against Me 266 Rein Marines Official Version” 2011). Both American and British news sources quickly latched on, commenting on and supporting the work of these military service-members. Just four days after the video was published on YouTube, theDaily...

In a key moment in Saint Augustine’sConfessions, Augustine reflects on the silence of one of his mentors. Though later Augustine emphasizes the power of speech when he overhears a child reading holy words and experiences a moment of conversion, his figuring of Ambrose as a silent reader is instructive to not only Ambrose’s students but to us as teachers in a time of war.

When he [Ambrose] was reading, his eyes ran over the page and his heart perceived the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. He did not restrict access to anyone coming in, nor was...

Neither basic writers nor veterans are new to our colleges and universities. Indeed, as George Otte and Rebecca Mlynarczyk have observed, with steady increases in enrollment in basic writing courses and since the passage of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, both groups constitute significant and growing populations at many institutions: “Because of the demographic of the US military, many of [the veterans enrolling in colleges and universities] will be first-generation college students who have been out of school for years—a group that has historically needed basic writing or other types of remediation to succeed” (Otte and Mlynarczyk 2010, 181). But...

In 2008, an assistant director of a service-learning program at a large, midwestern research-one university shared with her military husband stationed in Iraq that their state’s government was making moves to cap tuition for veterans returning to postsecondary education. She was surprised that her husband did not seem to share her excitement about the moves being made to help ensure military veterans could afford college. When she asked him about his lack of enthusiasm, she found that he and several of his returning-vet buddies were uncomfortable with the idea of sitting in a classroom filled with the eighteen- to twenty-year-olds...

Over the last ten years, the growing body of research on student-veterans has provided scholars and educators with new insights about the transitional challenges student-veterans entering (or reentering) college often face. Only recently have we started to learn about the experiences and perceptions of student-veterans in undergraduate composition courses and the importance of considering these experiences and perceptions within the context of previous learning and writing interactions in the military. We know even less about the possible implications of these students’ experiences and perceptions on student-veteran collaborations in college and university writing centers. As more student-veterans enter or reenter college...