The Western Connecticut War on Terror (WoT) Veterans History Project is an initiative (in the planning stages) to connect student and faculty research with veterans who were witness to the events in the U.S. War on Terror from 2001 to 2014. To make those connections, oral histories will be sought from veterans from the WCSU community and from the greater Western Connecticut area. In addition, we will encourage veterans to share items that document their military experience (ID cards, mementos, militaria, etc.) which will be digitized. These interviews and objects will be the springboard from which student and faculty research will be conducted on aspects of the War on Terror.
This research will enable students to utilize the oral histories to analyze American military actions between 2001 and 2014. In addition, the Project presents opportunities to link veterans and scholars in conference settings to explore questions of historical memory and the experiences of modern warfare. This will be a positive contribution to honoring veteran experiences within our university community.
Veterans from the WCSU Community will first be surveyed to determine themes/subjects in which to categorize the various veteran experiences in this community; subsequently, interview questions will be prepared based on those themes/subjects. Interviews will be scheduled and conducted over the course of a year and those interviews will be uploaded to the WCSU Archives site along with any accompanying items that document that veteran’s experience.
From the thematic categories determined from the survey, topics and areas of research will be assigned to students and that research, when complete, will be posted to the Archives’ site.
This Project will be a collaboration between the WCSU Archives, History Department, Media Services and Office of Student Affairs.
Veterans are encouraged to participate by having their experiences recorded. We plan to donate copies of the oral histories to the Veterans History Project of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.