Call: Mil-Vet Identity, Advocacy & Representation

Organizers of the 5th Veterans in Society (ViS) Conference, a biennial traveling event based at Virginia Tech, have issued a call for papers for an event that will take place in St. Louis. The theme of the event is "veteran identity, advocacy, and representation." Submissions window opens June 1, 2019 and closes Nov. 4, 2019. Notifications of acceptance will be communicated by early December 2019.

The conference will be conducted March 22-24, 2020 at the J.C. Penny Conference Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, 1 University Blvd., St. Louis, Mo.

The call includes "scholars at all levels—including students and those out of academia" and crosses "national, cultural, historical, and disciplinary boundaries."

Presentation formats may include:

• Individual presentations: 75- to 100-word abstract, 250-word proposal 
• Panel presentations, with 3 to 4 presenters: 150- to 200-word abstract, 750-word proposal including potential panelists
• Poster presentations, by individual or collaborative presenters (1 poster per submission): 150- to 200-word abstract
• Roundtable discussions, with 4 or more presenters: 150- to 200-word abstract, 500-word proposal
• Works-in-progress: workshop sessions to share and refine early-stage research and/or engagement projects with kindred scholars and potential collaborators: 500-word proposal (works-in-progress submissions will not undergo peer review)

Full guidelines and specifications, as well as a series of prompts on "identity," "advocacy," and "representation" themes, are available here.

Submissions and questions can be directed via e-mail to: vis20 AT umsl DOT edu

Started in 2011, the Veterans Society Initiative promotes the "scholarly understanding of veterans among citizens, and as citizens." The Journal of Veterans Studies is an affiliated project.

Organizers write:

Our initiative is not simply for veterans of this or that country nor about veterans of this or that historical moment. We honor the work of veterans to sustain one another carrying their distinctive military experiences though civilian life.  We respect applied scholarship in medicine, economics, and public policy.  But ours is an inclusive enterprise that aspires to improve understanding of what it means, subjectively and socially, to be a veteran in civil society—taking seriously the myriad of military, semi-military, and post-military experiences and diversity of persons and social contexts through which they work out.

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