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Outside the Wire is a multi-format humanities project that highlights the narratives and experiences of American veterans throughout the country’s history of conflict. Supported in part by an Action Grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, this project includes generative writing workshops for the veteran community in South Jersey and Philadelphia led by national nonprofit Warrior Writers; an annual public program featuring conversations between recent veterans and writers/scholars/curators whose work intersects with issues of concern to veterans and service members, and other program formats.  

During the 2020-21 project cycle, Outside the Wire explored the impact of service on veterans’ families: both individual family experiences and the military family unit more broadly. The objects and testimonies featured here belong to veterans and their family members, and symbolize their own or their families’ experience of service in many different ways. Whether veterans deployed or stayed close to home, and whether their service was recent or many years ago, these objects and the memories they carry will continue to serve as reminders of a life-changing period in military families' lives.