Today's guest has an inspiring story - Jason Higgins comes from working-class roots in Southeastern Arkansas, where he took a chance on going to college, then hit his stride through hard work, raising a family, and discovering a passion for telling people's stories. From the University of Arkansas-Montecello, where he earned a BA in English AND History, Jason headed to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to take an MA in English at Oklahoma State, studying Lewis Puller's memoir Fortunate Son. That work caught the attention of Christian Appy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, so Jason packed up the family and headed East. Now an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the Virginia Tech History Department and Libraries, Jason is doing fantastic work on veterans and incarceration and veteran oral histories while sharing with students his enthusiasm for teaching and writing.

Jason is author of Prisoners after War: Veterans in the Age of Mass Incarceration (UMass) and co-editor with John Kinder of Service Denied: Marginalized Veterans in Modern American History (UMass), and was lead for an NEH grant "Crossing Divides Connecting Veterans, Teachers, and Students through Oral History."

Join us for a remarkable chat with Jason Higgins - we'll talk about being a first-generation college student, having kids in graduate school, learning the value of hard work, guitars, grant writing, AI, and, as is often the case on this podcast, the simple serendipity of life. You'll feel good after this one (as you should all our chats!).

Shout-out to Rising Silo and the band Midlife Crisis in Blacksburg, Virginia!

Rec.: 02/28/2025