S3E12 David Kieran - Columbus State University

Our guest today is the guitar-playing, hiking, marathon-running, American Studies guy-turned-historian David Kieran! Dave is an Associate Professor and the Colonel Richard R. Hallock Distinguished Chair in Military History at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. Before coming to Columbus State, he was associate professor and chair of the history department at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, PA, where he also served as coordinator for the American Studies program. Dave was also a visiting assistant professor in the American Studies Department at Franklin & Marshall College and in the History Department at Skidmore College. He earned a BA in English from Connecticut College and a PhD in American Studies from George Washington University.

A scholar of the post-Vietnam American military, Dave is the author of Signature Wounds: The Untold Story of the Military’s Mental Health Crisis (NYU Press) and Forever Vietnam: How A Divisive War Changed American Public Memory (University of Massachusetts Press). He has also edited or co-edited several volumes, including The War of My Generation: Youth Culture and the War on Terror (Rutgers University Press) and At War: The Military and American Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Rutgers University Press), with Edwin A. Martini. David’s articles have been published in War & Society, the Journal of American Studies, and the Journal of War and Culture Studies, and he has contributed to numerous edited volumes. Finally, he has written for the Washington Post, Psychology Today, and Slate. His new project is tentatively titled How the Army Saved Itself: Maxwell R. Thurman and the Army’s Post-Vietnam Metamorphosis.

Dave has two awesome dogs, has run over a dozen marathons, and has more guitars than Bill, which is a sore point with Bill. Join us for a great chat about interdisciplinary approaches to doing history, interviewing retired generals, running marathons, mental health issues in the American military, Bruce Springsteen, Alabama white sauce, acoustic viz electric guitars - and more!

And forgive Bill's kitchen renovation noise! Military Historians have kitchens, too!

Shoutout to Smoke Bourbon and BBQ in Columbus!

Rec.: 04/06/2023