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Expendable: The Enduring Life of
Wartime Ephemera
Design Director
Gary Mills
“The fame, therefore, of her virtue shall never die, and the immortals shall compose a song that shall be welcome to all mankind in honour of the constancy of Penelope.” Homer, The Odyssey
Figure 1: Original Cover of "His Service Record"
I embellished this volume's otherwise routine table of contents (TOC) structure by adding an image of a WWII artifact I’ve treasured for years, my Uncle Roy’s WWII scrap book. I had scanned and digitized the entire document following interviews conducted across three days while visiting with Roy and Aunt Annie at their farm in July 2000. My original intent was to place this artful cover at the center of the TOC. Its simulated leather-tooled appearance is striking, giving the fragile paper booklet some gravitas. Note the floral patterns nestling the military service insignias and the red, white, and blue framing and flag accents. The tan color is time’s patina on the once white cardstock (Figure 1). After writing a short piece about how this WWII artifact connected to my family, I had planned to call it good. Fortunately, my initial show-and-tell concept soon turned into a deeper dive into the surprising influences of this WWII participatory publication.
As I examined each page of the scrapbook, I was struck by the fact that this was more than a textual and visual synopsis of my Uncle’s time in the Army (1943-1945). It was equally, if not more so, a multimodal expression of his wife Annie's resilience and determination at a time when it was common practice to ignore or downplay women’s wartime contributions.
Her handwriting is literally on every page as the primary curator and archivist. She painstakingly mounted paper corners on pictures and newspaper clippings to stitch them with glue to each page. Importantly, it was Annie's subtle, but striking, addition of "and wife" (Figure 2) to this shopworn patriotic formula that caught my eye. It was her “I was here” declaration that motivated further study of participatory genres and narratives.
Ultimately,Annie inspired my own (I was here) alteration of the original cover placed on the journal's TOC. My hope was to make the image reflect a clear invitation to all contributors to leave their mark not only within their own works but also have the design of the journal itself support the need to hear from the widest range of voices, especially given the quality, breath, and timing of this volume.
All this started research into participatory publications and the surrounding narratives that allow them to operate, if even for a brief time. I needed to know more about the narratives that potentially influenced Annie’s selection of genres (Figure 3) for inclusion in the scrapbook. My impulse to participate in my own way reveals the complex contexts, layers, and purposes surrounding this multimodal, multi-perspective, and multi-purpose text.
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Figure 2: Annie's Addition of "and wife" to the Standard Narrative
This text encourages agency but it also enforces specific scaffolding and constraints. It leans heavily into the established, national-level patriotic narrative that was planted during WWI and then expanded during WWII. In this sense, Annie was navigating a layered look into how these different stories, perspectives, and purposes aligned, conflicted or struggled to fit neatly within "His Service Record." In this case, she opted to modify the template.
Annie is critical to the activation of this hybrid genre, which requires an understanding of a whirlwind of influential narrative fragments. Ultimately, my response to this ephemeral artifact, and its full purpose, is even more fragmented, resulting in the hybrid genre you see here.
Figure 3: Samples of different genres and formats in "His Service Record."
I invite you to check back on this section in the coming weeks each time you visit the site. Inspired by the serialized works of old, I will add to this over the rest of the year. The material in the scrapbook and the narratives surrounding its creation rapidly got out of hand. Even so, I plan to share more about participatory texts and the top-down narratives that create complimentary and contrasting responses from the bottom-up voices behind the fragments in the scrapbook.
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