{"id":16451,"date":"2010-07-28T08:12:15","date_gmt":"2010-07-28T12:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=16451"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:37:11","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:37:11","slug":"through-the-eyes-of-three-soldiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/07\/through-the-eyes-of-three-soldiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Through the Eyes of Three Soldiers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"buckley_t\"<\/a>
Roger Buckley, professor of history. Photo by Lanny Nagler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When the archives don\u2019t tell the whole story, imagination can.<\/p>\n

Historian Roger Buckley<\/a> relies not only on scholarly non-fiction to tell a story, he also uses literary historical fiction to fill in some of the missing record.<\/p>\n

He believes this type of fiction has a \u201cspecial cultural and historical centrality\u201d in view of some of the inherent limitations of non-fiction. He believes that serious historical fiction gives history a certain \u201cimmediacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe serious novel also has the ability to copy reality \u2018seamlessly\u2019,\u201d he says, as demonstrated in his recently completed trilogy, Accommodation and Resistance \u2013 Three Chose Rebellion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The novels explore the question of race, identity, gender, culture, nationality, and politics in the British Army of the 19th century through the eyes of three soldiers \u2013 each one a real historical character.<\/p>\n

Buckley, a professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences<\/a>, explores the value of fiction as an aid to history in his History Through Fiction course, which he first taught in 2009.<\/p>\n

Buckley describes himself as an historian of war and society. \u201cI\u2019m not interested in battle history \u2013 military history \u2013 even though that\u2019s an important adjunct. As a social historian, I\u2019m more interested in looking at war directly through the lives of those who have lived through that harrowing experience,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Buckley\u2019s scholarly work shows that the study of war is more than the study of battlefield conflict and has social, cultural, geographical, medical, economic, gender, legal, intellectual, and political aspects as well.<\/p>\n

Buckley\u2019s many books and journal articles have been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, India, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and St. Kitts. He has also received research awards, among them the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Carter Brown Library Fellowship (Brown University), the Sir William Osler Medical Library Fellowship (McGill University), the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the University of Connecticut Provost\u2019s Research Fellowship.<\/p>\n

Buckley is the founding director of the Asian American Studies Institute<\/a> and recently established a scholarship in his name for students with an interest in Asian history and Asian American studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it sounds corny,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I wanted to give something back to my students who I have had the honor to teach over these many years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scholarship is also in memory of his Caribbean-born parents who stressed the vital importance of education. Buckley, who was born in New York City and grew up in Queens, joined the UConn faculty in 1984.<\/p>\n

Buckley\u2019s courses sometimes lead him to fresh areas of scholarly pursuit. His course on the internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians during the Second World War sparked an interest in the history of Montreal\u2019s Japanese Canadian community, which came into being only after the war.<\/p>\n

Unable to return to Vancouver, British Columbia (where the vast majority of Japanese Canadians lived prior to 1939), about 5,000 internees settled in Montreal after the war. \u201cThere was no such community before the war,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n

Buckley, who received his Ph.D. from McGill University and lived in Montreal for nine years, is familiar with the history of the city and has been using archives at the National Archives in Ottawa and at McGill\u2019s Special Archives Collection for his study.<\/p>\n

In addition to the history of Montreal\u2019s Japanese Canadian community, Buckley is also writing a novel about World War II. And in his spare time, he\u2019s been working on a series of political and cultural history novels with the same central character in each: a university history professor. \u201cGuess who that is?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Related article:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Historical Novel Explores Race, Identity, Nationality In India<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social historian Roger Buckley writes historical fiction about the lives of real characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-16451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-27 12:52:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16451"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36580,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16451\/revisions\/36580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16451"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=16451"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}