Gender and the Great War

Gender and the Great War
Author: Susan R. Grayzel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190271078

The centenary of the First World War in 2014-18 offers an opportunity to reflect upon the role of gender history in shaping our understanding of this pivotal international event. From the moment of its outbreak, the gendered experiences of the war have been seen by contemporary observers and postwar commentators and scholars as being especially significant for shaping how the war can and must be understood. The negotiating of ideas about gender by women and men across vast reaches of the globe characterizes this modern, instrumental conflict. Over the past twenty-five years, as the scholarship on gender and this war has grown, there has never been a forum such as the one presented here that placed so many of the varying threads of this complex historiography into conversation with one another in a manner that is at once accessible and provocative. Given the vast literature on the war itself, scholarship on gender and various themes and topics provides students as well as scholars with a chance to think not only about the subject of the war but also the methodological implications of how historians have approached it. While many studies have addressed the national or transnational narrative of women in the war, none address both femininity and masculinity, and the experiences of both women and men across the same geographic scope as the studies presented in this volume.

Gender and the First World War

Gender and the First World War
Author: Christa Hämmerle
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2014-01-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137302208

The First World War cannot be sufficiently documented and understood without considering the analytical category of gender. This exciting volume examines key issues in this area, including the 'home front' and battlefront, violence, pacifism, citizenship and emphasizes the relevance of gender within the expanding field of First World War Studies.

Behind the Lines

Behind the Lines
Author: Margaret R. Higonnet
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 1987-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300044294

Essays analyze the two world wars in respect to gender politics and reassesses the differences between men and women in relation to war

Women and the Great War

Women and the Great War
Author: Allison Scardino Belzer
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2010-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN:

Drawing on both wartime discourse about women and the voices of individual women living at the Italian Front, Allison Belzer analyzes how women participated in the Great War and how it affected them. The Great War transformed women into purveyors and recipients of a new feminine ideal that emphasized their status as national citizens. Although Italian women did not gain the vote, they did encounter a less empowering form of female citizenship just after the war ended with Mussolini’s Fascism. Because of the Great War, many women seized the opportunity to participate in a society that continued to recognize them as guardians of the nation.

Women's Identities at War

Women's Identities at War
Author: Susan R. Grayzel
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2014-03-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469620812

There are few moments in history when the division between the sexes seems as "natural" as during wartime: men go off to the "war front," while women stay behind on the "home front." But the very notion of the home front was an invention of the First World War, when, for the first time, "home" and "domestic" became adjectives that modified the military term "front." Such an innovation acknowledged the significant and presumably new contributions of civilians, especially women, to the war effort. Yet, as Susan Grayzel argues, throughout the war, traditional notions of masculinity and femininity survived, primarily through the maintenance of--and indeed reemphasis on--soldiering and mothering as the core of gender and national identities. Drawing on sources that range from popular fiction and war memorials to newspapers and legislative debates, Grayzel analyzes the effects of World War I on ideas about civic participation, national service, morality, sexuality, and identity in wartime Britain and France. Despite the appearance of enormous challenges to gender roles due to the upheavals of war, the forces of stability prevailed, she says, demonstrating the Western European gender system's remarkable resilience.

Irish Women and the Great War

Irish Women and the Great War
Author: Fionnuala Walsh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2020-07-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108491200

The first full-length study to explore the impact of the Great War on the lives of women in Ireland. Fionnuala Walsh examines women's mobilisation for the war effort, and the impact of the war on their employment opportunities, family and domestic life, social morality and politicisation.

The First World War

The First World War
Author: Susan R. Grayzel
Publisher: Macmillan Higher Education
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2020-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1319191142

A brief but thorough collection, Susan Grayzel’s new revision of The First World War document reader allows students to experience this historical turning point through various sources from the period and the scholarship tied to them.

The Second Line of Defense

The Second Line of Defense
Author: Lynn Dumenil
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2017-02-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469631229

In tracing the rise of the modern idea of the American "new woman," Lynn Dumenil examines World War I's surprising impact on women and, in turn, women's impact on the war. Telling the stories of a diverse group of women, including African Americans, dissidents, pacifists, reformers, and industrial workers, Dumenil analyzes both the roadblocks and opportunities they faced. She richly explores the ways in which women helped the United States mobilize for the largest military endeavor in the nation's history. Dumenil shows how women activists staked their claim to loyal citizenship by framing their war work as homefront volunteers, overseas nurses, factory laborers, and support personnel as "the second line of defense." But in assessing the impact of these contributions on traditional gender roles, Dumenil finds that portrayals of these new modern women did not always match with real and enduring change. Extensively researched and drawing upon popular culture sources as well as archival material, The Second Line of Defense offers a comprehensive study of American women and war and frames them in the broader context of the social, cultural, and political history of the era.

Female Intelligence

Female Intelligence
Author: Tammy M. Proctor
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814766943

Informative and innovative, this book focuses on the cultural images, realities, challenges, and contradictions for women in intelligence service in Britain during World War I.

“Work or Fight!”

“Work or Fight!”
Author: G. Shenk
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2008-03-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781403961778

During World War I the U.S. demanded that all able-bodied men work or fight. White men who were husbands and fathers, owned property or worked at approved jobs had the benefits of citizenship without fighting. Others were often barred from achieving these benefits. This book tells the stories of those affected by the Selective Service System.