After four years of organizing, planning, researching, outreach and more, faculty Jennifer Kling, Ph.D., and Max Shulman, Ph.D., are concluding their long-term project “To the Battlefield and Back Again” with a podcast release.
Kling, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Legal Studies, and Shulman, Associate Professor of Theatre and Director of the Heller Center for the Arts and Humanities, partnered for the project as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities “Dialogues on the Experience of War” initiative, with the goal of raising awareness, bringing community members together and providing a platform for issues facing our veterans, active-duty service members and their families.
The podcast, “To the Battlefield and Back Again: Conversations on War, Trauma, and Life After Service,” features a series of discussions conducted from 2022-2023 between veterans, active-duty military members, military affiliates and civilians on the topics of war, trauma and the reintegration process.
“My specialty is war and peace, and one of the recurring issues in the study of war and peace, from a philosophical perspective, is not including the perspective of those who experienced it,” said Kling. “It’s a bunch of academics talking about it. I strongly felt that we needed some discussion with folks who have experienced it, or experienced being on the home front, waiting for people to come home, or who have gone through the process of being deployed two, three, four times. You actually get those voices here. That piece for me was very, very important.”
“What was so great about building the podcast is that these conversations were long and far reaching, and they covered lots of ground every day,” added Shulman. “They went on for hours sometimes, and covered diverse topics, and I was touched by the civility of the conversation and the way people seemed to really be listening to each other.”
The discussions not only gave those voices a platform to share their experiences, but also allowed civilians to learn more about military-affiliated experiences firsthand and the lesser-known obstacles that come with them.
“The notion of creating a space and opportunity for someone who may not understand a particular culture or experience to ask a question, because they’re questions you would probably never feel comfortable asking in any other scenario, was exciting for me,” said Shulman. “Some questions ended up being really simple, like somebody asking, ‘Do you want us to say thank you for your service?’ and sometimes the answers were surprising. It was also simply an opportunity for those people to feel like their stories mattered and were welcome and wanted.”
“It’s very easy for civilians to have a picture in our heads of the war experience, a very particular, outdated image of military in tricorn hats or storming the beaches of Normandy,” Kling added. “And it’s easy for our civilian population to just hold that image of American heroism and not engage with the complexity of what it looks like to join a 21-year war halfway across the world and then come back and try to get health insurance, or try to get your GED, or come back and have to deal with civilians who are endlessly seven minutes late.”
While Kling and Shulman spearheaded this multi-year project, several other people and organizations helped along the way.
“All the people who went through the work of preparing for and then doing the facilitation for discussions – they were really on the front lines of this,” noted Shulman. “Food for Thought, who did our facilitator training, were really helpful with their experience in community discourse. We had people here at UCCS helping, like Philip Morris, who has been very supportive all along the way in both offering background on military culture as a veteran and assisting with the research, and Erin Fowler, who works at the Lane Center trauma unit and is a therapist who specializes in combat vets, came in and talked to our facilitators and podcasters. I also reached out to places like Mount Carmel and the Home Front Military Network, which helped us find people to include, and we had a whole board that was involved, and support from the UCCS Veterans center.”
“And our program coordinator, Lauren Rock, who managed many of the day-to-day aspects, and our student researchers/podcasters: Musa Brennan, Bella Miteff and Sarah Kamel,” added Kling. “Along with The Greenberg Center for Learning and Tolerance, who helped provide food for our participants.”
Though this project is officially concluding with the podcast, there’s more to come with the content and research. Kling plans to feature some in a separate podcast she’ll be hosting that focuses on political violence, while Shulman is in the early stages of authoring a book that pulls from the project. Additionally, data from the project will be incorporated into research and pedagogy articles.
“Dr. Philip Morris, COE associate professor and our program evaluator, is taking the data that we collected from the discussion participants and from the discussion leaders, and is working with some of his graduate students to develop a series of articles for peer reviewed journals that focus on veteran studies and education,” Kling shared.
Listeners can find “To the Battlefield and Back Again: Conversations on War, Trauma, and Life After Service,” on Spotify and other podcast platforms.