By Dr. Bryon L. Garner | November 11, 2026
The University of Windsor has published a feature by Lindsay Charlton about my work as a Fulbright Special Foundation Fellow. I appreciate the opportunity to share the questions that brought me to Windsor and continue to guide my scholarship.
My military service and my family’s history of service remain fundamental to how I approach this work. They inform my perspective while also reminding me to attend carefully to experiences that differ from my own.
The questions behind Black Veteranality
Black Veteranality provides a framework for examining how racialized experiences of military service shape knowledge, identity, patriotism, and national belonging.
I am interested in what veterans and their families understand through their experiences—and what happens when they bring that knowledge to institutions and the broader public. Whose accounts are considered credible? Who has the authority to interpret what military service means? When people raise concerns about exclusion or unequal treatment, how do institutions respond, and what changes?
These questions also guide my examination of patriotism. I approach patriotism as something people interpret, debate, and claim authority to define. That means examining how judgments about loyalty are made, whose evidence counts, and whether people can challenge their country’s failures while retaining an equal voice in its future.
Rights and human dignity belong to everyone. Military service offers one setting in which to examine whether a nation’s practices fulfill its stated commitments.
Why Windsor matters
My project, Transborder Black Veteranality, examines these questions across the Detroit–Windsor corridor. Working across two national settings requires attention to their distinct histories, institutions, and understandings of race and citizenship.
The UWindsor feature highlights one direction in this research: freedom seekers who reached Canada and later returned to join the Union Army. Their journeys raise questions that cannot be answered by assuming that residence, citizenship, military service, and national attachment always align.
My task is to investigate those relationships through evidence, preserving differences in people’s circumstances and motivations.
I am grateful to Dr. Shanthi Johnson and Dr. Robert Nelson for their support, and to Irene Moore Davis and Antoinette Seymour for helping me engage with the region’s history.
Remaining open to what the evidence reveals
One statement quoted in the feature captures an essential part of my approach: “I could be wrong.”
That willingness to reconsider is a scholarly responsibility. It means listening, testing interpretations, acknowledging uncertainty, and allowing evidence to change an argument.
I invite you to read the feature and follow the research as it develops.
Read “Fulbright fellow brings research on Black Veteranality to Windsor” on UWindsor News.