Until relatively recently, deserters in past times, with the exception of runaway slaves, have generally received bad scholarly press. Why? Acts of desertion—the abandonment of “duty” without permission—often suggest moral dereliction, and, thus, the repudiation of widely valorized qualities, like loyalty and faithfulness, that are integral to, and privileged by, the family, organized religion, and the state.

During the last few generations in the United States—beginning with the war in Vietnam—views of deserters and desertion have become both more complex and more indulgent, if not forgiving. Indeed, today the U.S. Army—to cite but one institutional example—rarely takes desertion cases to court, preferring to handle them in less fraught ways. Scholars have also changed their approaches to the study of desertion, viewing it in less value-laden and more deeply contextualized ways. They are more apt to see it now as an expression of, or a response to, institutional relationships of one...

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