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Imaging War
Our Fall activities were largely organized around a single theme – “Imaging War.” Through a series of exhibits, installations, and presentations, we invited students to reflect on war as a theological and pastoral challenge, and to embrace “ways of knowing” other than the written word.
We began with “Unembedded,” an exhibit of photographs taken by four independent journalists who lived and worked in Iraq from 2002-2005. www.unembedded.net. The exhibit lined the walls of the divinity school, and remained in place throughout the first half of the semester. Then, in late October, through the good offices of the American Friends Service Committee, we brought to the campus “Eyes Wide Open,” a public art installation more commonly known as “the Boots Project.” www.afsc.org/eyes. For eleven days the divinity school quadrangle was filled with army boots representing servicemen and women killed in Iraq. The boots stretched out row on row, each pair bearing the dogtag of an individual service member. On October 27, Episcopal students and faculty held morning prayer on the chilly quad. Four days later, the boots served as the liturgical setting for a school-wide All Souls Day service.
In November, the Initiative sponsored a staged reading by the original cast of “Boots on the Ground,” a play conceived and written by members of the Trinity Repertory Company of Providence, Rhode Island. www.trinityrep.com. The play was based on more than 150 hours of interviews with a wide range of citizens – soldiers, veterans, family members, teachers, doctors, journalists, and clergy. The playwrights pared down the transcripts, and wove the interviewees actual words into a compelling docudrama that explores the Iraq War's impact on Rhode Island from a broad variety of perspectives, personal and political.
Throughout the Fall, we provided a variety of opportunities for students and faculty to react to the artistic presentations, explore the complex ways in which individuals and communities are affected by war, and prepare themselves for the pastoral challenges ahead. The “Imaging War” series ended with a session in which a military chaplain and a V.A. psychotherapist spoke about the issues that commonly arise for military families and returning Iraq War vets.