Veterans In Society Conference To Highlight Servicemembers’ Stories

BLACKSBURG, Va. – The third Veterans and Society conference will take place November 12 – 14 at the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center. The conference features speakers including Tim O'Brien, National Book Award-winning author of “The Things They Carried" and Adm. John C. Harvey, Jr., VA's Secretary for Veterans and Defense Affairs.

The theme of this year's conference is Race and/or Reconciliation. In addition to O'Brien, the event features a keynote address by Prof. James Marten (Marquette), author of “Sing Not War: The Lives of Union and Confederate Veterans in Gilded Age America (Civil War America)," as well as a performance of the play “Speed Killed My Cousin," by Linda Parris-Bailey, winner of the 2015 Doris Duke award. The play tells the story of an African-American veteran struggling over her combat experiences in Iraq.

The Veterans in Society conference is sponsored by the Virginia Tech Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society with partners across the university to include VT's Libraries, the VT Center for the Arts, and the newly formed VT Veterans Caucus. According to the center's director, James Dubinsky:

“People are beginning to realize that we have many dedicated American citizens who, after many tours abroad, often in combat zones, are coming home. They're discovering that the society they left has changed and they've changed. Our roles including studying an facilitating that transition and the transitions that have occurred across time."

“Many of our presenters are both academics and veterans. We are veterans telling our stories and stories about our comrades, both past and present," said Dubinsky, himself a veteran.said Dubinsky, himself a veteran.

The Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society is affiliated with the Department of English at Virginia Tech. The center's mission is to restore the arts of rhetoric to a meaningful place in education and civic life.