This informal seminar is open to all Columbia affiliates and neighbors and will meet:
Wednesdays, July 8, 15, 22, and 29, 5:30 - 7 p.m. Refreshments will be served.
Note: Separate registration required for each session.
How has America’s relationship with its armed forces evolved over the past 250 years? From Lexington and Concord to Kabul and the Caribbean, America’s military has played important roles in the nation’s history. This seminar will consider how those roles have and have not changed from the eighteenth-century to today. We’ll look at the Founders’ anxieties about standing armies, consider the role of the armed forces in Reconstruction, examine military support for integration at home, and ask what the tasks the military might find itself asked to perform in the coming years. This summer, we will meet three times for discussion seminars, followed by a fourth meeting to synthesize the work we’ve done, a discussion that will serve as a launching pad for a conversation about the future. At stake: what should America’s relationship with its armed forces look like in the 21st century?
8 July: Introductions; America’s Sense of Its Own Military
15 July: The Armed Forces Abroad
22 July: The Military at Home
29 July: Review of past readings and a concluding discussion
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How might the past help us understand the American armed forces’ relationship to society in the years to come, including the evolving role and public misconceptions of the National Guard, its relationship with law enforcement and the Posse Comitatus Act, and its place at the intersection of military service, domestic response, veteran experience, and civic life?
Our seminar meetings will be informal. We will distribute the reading selections over email and bring hardcopies to class. There is no requirement to buy anything. You’re encouraged to read a little before we meet, but don’t worry if you can’t get through everything. We’ll start each seminar with a brief introduction, followed by some time to review/read the texts in focus. The bulk of our time will then be spent in guided conversation.
About the Instructor:
Nick Utzig is assistant professor of English in the Dept. of English and World Languages at West Point. He received his PhD from Harvard University, where his research focused on representations of war in English Renaissance literature. His scholarly work appears in Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, and The Journal of War and Culture Studies, and his reviews may be found in Theatre Survey, Shakespeare Quarterly, and the LA Review of Books. Nick is currently working on a book on representations of the return from war in Shakespearean drama. Before his PhD, Nick was a US Army aviation officer and served in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Image: Jean-Baptiste-Antoine DeVerger, “American soldiers at the siege of Yorktown,” 1781 (Image source: https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/uniforms-of-the-american-revolution/)