2017 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities

June 01 - 04, 2017

This panel describes the work of reading Homer (Iliad, Odyssey) with veterans and considers the strategies for reading and appropriating ancient male-authored texts in order to explore modern female experience and return from war. Combining academics, mental health clinicians, and female veterans, the panel replicates the structure of the book groups and allows the perspectives of each constituency to be explored. The session will enable veterans and academics in the audience to connect and establish a network for building book groups.

The book groups provide a venue for a form of teaching as community outreach that facilitates individual engagement with a text as a basis for self-reflection and narrative construction about personal experience.

Professor Roberta Stewart will summarize and assess the book groups (premises, design, logistics, andsessions), then compare the reading experience of male and female veterans.

Professor Rosemary Moore will relate her experiences teaching ancient warfare, particularly as portrayed in Homer, through her dual perspective, as a female veteran and delineate the tension between these identities.

Dr. Cliff Trott describes his work facilitating book groups for male and female vets and emphasizes the potential of the book groups to counter the perceived invisibility that female veterans report experiencing as they transition from military to civilian status.

One female veteran (TBD) will present on her experience of the reading groups. Stewart has previously successfully included veterans in presentations on the book groups (War Trauma conference, Washington DC, 2010).