ABOUT THIS BOOK

Wartime military service is held up as a marker of civic duty and patriotism, yet the rewards of veteran status have never been equally distributed. Certain groups of military veterans—women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and former service members with stigmatizing conditions, “bad paper” discharges, or criminal records—have been left out of official histories, excised from national consciousness, and denied state recognition and military benefits.

Chronicling the untold stories of marginalized veterans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Service Denied uncovers the generational divides, cultural stigmas, and discriminatory policies that affected veterans during and after their military service. Together, the chapters in this collection recast veterans beyond the archetype, inspiring an innovative model for veterans studies that encourages an intersectional and interdisciplinary analysis of veterans history. In addition to contributions from the volume editors, this collection features scholarship by Barbara Gannon, Robert Jefferson, Evan P. Sullivan, Steven Rosales, Heather Marie Stur, Juan Coronado, Kara Dixon Vuic, John Worsencroft, and David Kieran.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

JOHN M. KINDER is associate professor of history and director of the American Studies Program at Oklahoma State University.

JASON A. HIGGINS is a postdoctoral fellow in digital humanities and oral history at Virginia Tech.

REVIEWS

“Using cutting-edge scholarship, this collection presents new insights on historically marginalized groups. Service Denied makes invaluable contributions to the fields of military history, African American history, Latinx history, women’s history, and queer history.”—Steve Estes, author of Ask and Tell: Gay and Lesbian Veterans Speak Out

“This volume offers a bird’s eye view of major questions and issues in veterans studies, and a valuable intervention: those who study and write about former service members, the authors presciently declare, must consider how 'intersectional systems of oppression’ shape experiences in and beyond the military.”—Jessica L. Adler, author of Burdens of War: Creating the United States Veterans Health System

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Series

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Veterans in the Margins of Modern American History

I. Coming Home in the Great War Era

Chapter 1: So- Called Disabilities: Spanish War Veterans and the New Deal’s Economy Act

Chapter 2: New Frontiers for the New Negro: Revisiting the World War Memoir and the Postwar Veteran Politics of Jesse L. Fraser in the 1920s

Chapter 3: The Unseen Army: Neuropsychiatry, Patient Agency, and World War I

II. Marginalized Veterans in the American Century

Chapter 4: Unsuitable for Service: Bedwetting Veterans since World War II

Chapter 5: Uncle Sam’s Generosity? Chicano Veterans and the GI Bill, 1944– 74

chapter 6: Red, White, Lavender, and Blue: LGBT Soldiers and Veterans and the Fight for Military Recognition

III. In the Shadow of a Lost War

Chapter 7: Pawns in Their Wars: The Peace Committee of Southeast Asia and the Tumultuous Experiences of Vietnam POWs

Chapter 8: Our First Sister: Lynda Van Devanter and the Vietnam Veterans of America’s Women’s Project

Chapter 9: “The Wrong Man in Uniform”: Antidraft Republicans and the Ideological Origins of the All- Volunteer Force, 1966– 73

IV. Centering Marginalized Veterans in a Time of Forever War

Chapter 10: “The Patriot Penalty”: National Guard and Reserve Troops, Neoliberalism, and Manufactured Precarity in the Era of Perpetual Conflict

Chapter 11: Prisoners after War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration

Epilogue: #IAmVanessaGuillen

Contributors

Index

Back Cover