Resume

• 2012

  National Council - Professional Member-at-Large

  Alpha Lambda Delta National Honor Society

• 2011

  Student Counseling

  Non-fiction

  Curriculum Development

  Creative Problem Solving

  Financial Planning

  Transportation

  Critical Thinking

  Administration

  Fiction

  Grant Writing

  Adobe Acrobat

  Nonprofit Organizations

  Art

  Grammar

  Conference Coordination

  Event Planning

  Consulting

  Text Editing

  Contract Management

  Web Editing

  All Things Swim and Glimmer’: Pragmatic Conceptions of Self and ‘the old Lie’ in Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s ‘A Night in the Water'

  This essay examines one night of Higginson’s service in the American Civil War and the presence of Emersonian pragmatism

  arguing that identities formed within war are tainted with what Wilfred Owen calls ‘the old Lie.'

  All Things Swim and Glimmer’: Pragmatic Conceptions of Self and ‘the old Lie’ in Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s ‘A Night in the Water'

  In 2011 and 2012

  I designed and implemented an orientation to college course for student veterans. I offered a number of expressivist writing prompts to the students

  and the majority chose to write about war trauma. This paper includes my critical and personal reactions.

  Combat in the Classroom: A Writing and Healing Approach to Teaching Student Veterans

  In 2011 I formed an exploratory committee at Eastern Kentucky University and proposed the idea of a “Veterans’ Studies Program.” This piece for VFW Magazine showcases some of my curriculum and includes interviews from both veteran and non-veteran students enrolled in Veterans Studies courses.

  Finding Common Ground: Vets and Non-Vets Collaborate on Campus

  A continuation of a presentation I gave at the Conference on College Composition and Communication

  this essay strives to convince academia of the value of “Veterans Studies” as an academic discipline.

  Veterans Studies as an Academic Discipline

  After editing the collection of short stories

  poetry

  and artwork that later won national awards as The Journal of Military Experience

  I reflected upon the experience of working one on one with student veterans and the emotions it brought out in me.

  The Journal of Military Experience

  This article explores veterans’ therapeutic creative arts communities. My co-author provides insights into the science whereas I discuss the ethics of veterans’ creative endeavors

  citing examples from throughout the twentieth century.

  Veterans and the Arts as Healing Interventions

  This essay explores the relationship between soldiers and their weapons. It draws upon the ideas of Sigmund Freud

  Phyllis Greenacre

  and D. W. Winnicott to chart the evolution of the weapon from transitional object in Basic Combat Training to fetish in combat.

  Phantom Weapon Syndrome

  This story is a combination of my perspective on the night I was targeted with an IED in 2005 combined with an attempt to render the insurgent responsible through fiction. The story switches between my perspective and the insurgent’s until we meet at a violent center: the detonation of the IED.

  Doppelganger

  This poem is a product of my first exposure to combat. I found it difficult to relay the experience through prose because of memory gaps. But poetry seemed to be just the right vehicle for conveying the experience as I remembered it: in extreme flashes.

  A Little Boy with Bananas

  David Jones

  a British World War I soldier wounded in The Battle of the Somme

  combines poetry with prose

  lived experience with fictional characters and Welsh myth

  and employs the styles of high Modernism due to the practical necessities of negotiating societal and personal trauma.

  War

  Witness

  Modernism and David Jones’s Subversive Voice

  The films make suggestions about the postwar lives of veterans based only on shell shock’s most visible symptoms

  those viewable to the public through popular media

  ugly truths blown out of proportion and made hyper-real.

  ‘Working Through’ Societal Trauma in The Last Flight

  Heroes for Sale

  and All Quiet on the Western Front

  Louisa May Alcott served as a hospital nurse during the American Civil War. This paper proposes that certain elements within her novel are fictionalized versions of that lived experience.

  The Sparrow’s Fall: Self’s Mergence with Identity in Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches

  I intended for this poem to be one about my Appalachian upbringing. Certainly

  the “murky green” waters of Lake Cumberland and the “souless gaze” of my grandfather’s Angus are dominant

  but when I looked back at the poem I found a warning about loss of innocence hidden between the lines.

  Rifling About

  This chapter examines three films with “temporal prosthetics” fueled by nostalgia

  functioning as ghost limbs

  compelling time traveling protagonists to invent devices capable of transporting them to physical sites in the past.

  Temporal Prosthetics and Beautiful Pain: Loss

  Memory

  and Nostalgia in Somewhere in Time

  The Butterfly Effect

  and Safety Not Guaranteed

  Shoshana Johnson was the nation’s first

  African American female POW. This essay examines the influence of trauma and the media upon the creation of her memoir.

  The Battle for Balance: Ethnography and the Creation of Wartime Self in Shoshana Johnson’s I’m Still Standing

  This poem juxtaposes a soldier’s fear of the unknown alongside an attempt to hold true to his or her moral principles.

  The Writing on the Wall

  Veterans are changing America by embracing a form of healing that just so happens to send a message

  ‘No matter how rich or powerful a country becomes

  sending young men and women to war will never be without consequence.'

  What’s So Special About Today’s Veterans? The Public Way In Which They’re Healing

  An application of trauma theory and cognitive literary studies to the WWI and WWII memoirs of Robert Graves

  Hervey Allen

  and Paul Fussell

  this paper proposes an “anti-reality” where the absurdities of war make sense. After homecoming

  however

  the “wartime self” ceases to function.

  “Reality and Anti-Reality in WWI and WWII Memoirs”

  A continuation of the discussion in “War

  Witness

  Modernism and David Jones’s Subversive Voice

  ” this chapter argues that the Modernist aesthetic emerges in each generation of war veterans as they try to make sense of war trauma and engage society in an act of collective healing.

  Modernism and War: From David Jones to Brian Turner

  Travis

  Martin

  PhD

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Eastern Kentucky University

  KCTCS

  Eastern Kentucky University

  United States Army

  University of Kentucky

  Richmond

  KY

  Graduate Assistant

  Center for Student Accessibility

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Graduate Assistant

  Office of Military & Veterans Affairs

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Adjunct Faculty

  Online instructor of VTS 200: Intro to Veterans Studies

  Eastern Kentucky University

  United States Army

  Mannheim Area

  Germany

  Team Leader & Advanced Motor Vehicle Instructor (E-5)

  Lexington

  KY

  Instructor of the following in-person courses: ENG 280: Intro to Film

  ENG 230: Intro to American Literature

  WRD 203: Business Writing & Communication

  WRD 111: Composition & Communication II

  WRD 110: Composition & Communication I

  Graduate Teaching Assistant

  University of Kentucky

  Somerset

  Kentucky

  Online instructor of ENG 101

  Adjunct Faculty

  KCTCS

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Graduate Assistant

  Educational Technology

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Adjunct Faculty

  Instructor of the following in-person and online courses: ENG 386: War & Peace in Literature (Writing Intensive)

  WGS 300: Masculinities & War

  WGS 201: Intro to Women & Gender Studies

  VTS 490: Veterans Studies Program Directed Study

  VTS 200: Intro to Veterans Studies

  GSO 102: Student Success Seminar (standard and veteran-cohort sections)

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Patricia and William Stacy Endowed Fellowship

  University of Kentucky

  Dean’s Award

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Undergraduate Writing Award

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Stellar Scholar Award for Non-Traditional Students

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Chairs’ Memorial Scholarship

  Conference on College Composition and Communication

  Dissertation Year Fellowship

  University of Kentucky

  Phi Kappa Phi Chapter Fellowship

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Recognized by Kentucky State Assembly

  Kentucky State Assembly

  Outstanding Service Award

  Eastern Kentucky University Student Government

  National Literacy Grant

  Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi

  Presidential / McNair Scholarship for Excellence

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Graduate Writing Award

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Travel Grant

  Northeast Modern Language Association

  Robert L. Doty English Graduate Support Fund Award

  University of Kentucky

  President’s Award

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Graduated “Summa cum Laude”

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Program of the Year for The Journal of Military Experience

  Student Veterans of America

  Creative Non-Fiction Award

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Madonna Marsden Writing Award

  Eastern Kentucky University

  McNair Scholar Scholastic Achievement Award

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Doctor of Philosophy - PhD

  English

  University of Kentucky

  Graduate Certificate

  Social Theory

  University of Kentucky

• 2010

  Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW)

  President & Editor-in-Chief

  Military Experience & the Arts

  Master of Arts - MA

  English

  Eastern Kentucky University

• 2008

  Eastern Kentucky University Veterans Education & Transition Support (EKU VETS)

  Bachelor of Arts - BA

  English

  Eastern Kentucky University

  Summa cum Laude

• 2007

  Associate of Arts - AA

  English

  Somerset Community College

  High Distinction

• 4.0

  Master of Arts - MA

  Student Personnel Services in Higher Education

  Eastern Kentucky University