Fourteen student papers from an undergraduate seminar examine American POW memoirs from the Revolutionary War through the Vietnam War. The focus of the student authors is on how American POWs have constructed narratives of their internments. The papers examine various styles of narration, characterization, and plot construction and how the POW memoirs are framed with introductions, quotations, maps, and illustrations. Overall, these papers suggest that the contexts in which authors write POW memoirs may influence the character of the memoirs they write as much as the attributes of their POW experiences.
American POW Memoirs is a unique collection of papers. This publication provides an example of how an undergraduate seminar might move from training students in scholarly practice to providing students a first experience as scholarly practitioners.
