This panel serves as an opportunity to examine the role that military experience and its portrayal in narrative media come to shape Americans' perceptions of themselves; their values, their perceived status on the world stage, and concerning domestic sociopolitical issues. This panel moves beyond the traditional "war literature" framework to explore how the figure of the veteran (real and perceived) acts as a symbol for national anxieties and recent political transformations. The discussion analyzes how a veteranized subject’s depiction in film, poetry, novels, and interviews come to populate the American collective consciousness as politicians, activists, criminals, and "regular citizens” come to adopt a “veteranized” posture in relation to ongoing political events.

This session focuses on the under-examined and under-discussed relationship between veterans' writing, writing about veterans (and other military-complex social detritus) and the broader/current “American narrative.” While veterans play an outsized role in the 20th and 21st-century American metanarrative, scholarship on this topic remains fragmented. But that calculus is shifting. The growth of interdisciplinary fields like veterans’ studies provides a crucial space for this conversation. A quick survey of prominent American literature reveals a startling number of narratives in which ex-soldiers are entangled, all bearing the symbolic weight of service and sacrifice to different ends. Beyond the genre of “war literature,” this panel addresses what happens when, in the words of historian Kathleen Belew, we “bring the war home.” This panel analyzes and interrogates veteran figures and wartime concepts (such as drone warfare) and their impact on the increasingly-militant US cultural and political climate.

This session is a formal panel with four presentations of approximately 15 minutes each. This includes introductions of the panelists, a Q&A period, and at least 15 minutes of unstructured discussion at the end, prioritizing attendee contributions. Zak Jones serves as the presider, introducing the panelists and their topics, and using his presentation to tie-in concepts, propose questions and to facilitate discussion.

The session directly addresses a recent and critical development in the United States. Since April, we have seen the wholesale adoption by the American political right of a particular narrative of veteran-tinged aggrievement. This manufactured affect of anomie and begrudgement (stemming as far back as the Vietnam War) has been attributed to radicalized figures like Timothy McVeigh and Randy Weaver but has recently been coopted by contemporary media and political figures and embraced by half of the voting public in order to command and bolster the rapid militarization of American cities and political tension in the United States. The panel traces this phenomenon and its cultural manifestations through literature as it rapidly becomes a foundational element of a new American political reality.

This panel features scholars from the United States, Canada, and Europe, veterans and non-veterans alike. This geographic and institutional diversity provides for a dynamic perspective on the topic. The individual presentations are designed to be complementary, asserting distinct hypotheses while emphasizing the cross-pollination of ideas.

• Professor Corrine Hinton: "Thank You For Your Service: Civic Training and Recruitment for the 'Soldier as Celebrity'" examines post-9/11 veteran transitions from service into society through Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2012). Her presentation highlights how Fountain exposes the exploitative nature of "thank you for your service" culture and its role in reinforcing a "soldier as celebrity" paradigm.
• Professor Sarah Carter: “Their Voices: Who is Making the Most Noise?” relays and discuss varying perspectives of OIF and OEF veterans on the concept of a "just war." She interweaves quotes from these veterans with analyses of contemporary veteran literature to explore how they interact in social spaces, particularly on social media, to articulate their perspectives.
• Zak Jones articulates "The ‘Bad Veteranization’ of the American Right: Begrudgements, Political Violence, Anomie." This paper traces the manufacturing of a new concept of the “American citizen” through texts like J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy and Pete Hegseth’s War on Warriors. The analysis demonstrates how the right-wing media and political apparatus have cultivated an affective zone of political aggrievement first established by radicalized veterans of the Gulf War period.
• Spencer Morrison presents "In Our Name: Drone Poetry and the Demos." His paper brings to light a burgeoning corpus of recent U.S. poetry about drone militarism. He argues that these poems—by confronting citizens with a paradox where they are responsible for state actions they cannot control—testify to a democratic decline by questioning the responsibilities of citizenship in an age of attenuated popular will.