The spring of 2022, I took a class called “War and Everyday Life.” The course considered the militarization of the everyday, showing how war and everyday life — two spatiotemporal phenomena that at first glance appear opposed — are inextricably intertwined. In the course, we studied and compared divergent modes of representation provoked by war (global, spectacular) and everyday life (localized, minute, uneventful, textured).

The course was very much concerned with exploring more open-ended, de-hierarchized modes of pedagogy, conversation, reading, looking, and writing. Two major writing components of the course consisted in 1) object stories written by students that analyze the military histories of inconspicuous, mundane objects 2) a final paper collectively written by the entire class of 10 people, a practice practically unheard of in academia.

In the end, Jessica Flemming, another graphic designer who took the class, and I worked together to create the Mundane Militarisms website to host both the class's object stories and collective essay.