Vera Brittain worked as a voluntary nurse in France and Malta during the First World War. After the armistice, she went back to university, but by 1920 she wrote that the memories of the war “and its extraordinary aftermath had taken full possession of my warped and floundering mind.”[1] She was, she exclaimed, “Nothing but… Read more →
Tag: feminist military history
Rethinking Women, Gender, and War: A Feminist Approach
These four pathbreaking essays provide new insights into the role of women and war in military history. They pay particular attention to the impact of gendered assumptions on military practices and institutions in various sites and times around the world. Natalie Shibley highlights the difficulties women have fitting into the military, whether dealing with inappropriate… Read more →
It Just Wasn’t a Good Fit
Charity Adams Earley’s winter coat didn’t fit. At the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps Training Center in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1942, women had been issued winter overcoats designed for enlisted men. Earley’s coat was too short in the arms, but many other Army women found their coats too large. And, although Earley was training to… Read more →
Writing “Hearts and Minds” as Feminist Military History
I was very proud to defend my dissertation on the British Indian Army on March 8 – International Women’s Day – until one of my advisors noted (lovingly) that there were “hardly any women in it.” She pointed out (and implicitly criticized) what is the troublingly common assumption – that of course stories about wars… Read more →
Beyond Women and War: The Lens of Feminist Military History
My first understandings of feminist military history developed when I was an officer in the US Air Force in the 1990s. I had long been interested in “women and war” as a compelling topic. I even taught a course on the subject in the 1990s as a faculty member at the US Air Force Academy…. Read more →
The Guerrilla Household of Lizzie and William Gregg
Taking a feminist lens to the Civil War in Missouri–known for its models of hypermasculinity like William Quantrill, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, Frank and Jesse James, Cole Younger, and William H. Gregg–it becomes readily apparent that white women were as married to the war as their Confederate menfolk. Lizzie Hook, a young woman from a slaveholding… Read more →