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Author: Elizabeth Walton Wade Publisher: ISBN: Category : Electronic dissertations Languages : en Pages : 179
Book Description
My dissertation, "Gender and National Identity in American War Narratives," explores the intersection of gender and genre in American War narratives from the Vietnam War to the present day, focusing on the way that women's incorporation into the American military contributed to both the transformation and redefinition of American masculinity and, by extension, America proper. Building on Susan Jeffords's tenet that "War is a crucible for the distillation of social and cultural relations," this project interrogates the manner in which literary representations of war both reflect and help constitute the American gender system and the way this system in turn offers a historical commentary on inflections of American national identity. It also investigates the ideological complexities particular to war writing as genre, exploring identity politics and the tension surrounding issues of an author's status as veteran or civilian, considering what set of generic criteria constitutes and defines a war narrative, and chronicling the specific inflections of war narratives at particular historical moments. Gender is a principal concern of war narratives, and this project follows that concern by identifying a taxonomy of sub-genres of the war narrative, ranging from what I term the direct participation narrative, the account of one who experiences the war directly, to the mediated narrative, the story of a person who strives to understand someone else's war experience, and by analyzing the way those sub-genres reveal a gendering of the war narrative, both on the level of representational content and on the level of form. This work also explores the prevalence of a generic preference that dictates fidelity to the historical referent of the war being depicted. Authors may (and certainly do) fictionalize war; however, as this work argues, such fictionalization remains tightly constrained by generic conventions and broader ideological considerations of which they form a part. Although no text exists in a vacuum, the war narrative's attempt to represent a geopolitical and historical moment that carries real-life (and real death) consequences enacts a particular set of constraints as it represents America, its people, and that for which they will wage war.
Author: Elizabeth Walton Wade Publisher: ISBN: Category : Electronic dissertations Languages : en Pages : 179
Book Description
My dissertation, "Gender and National Identity in American War Narratives," explores the intersection of gender and genre in American War narratives from the Vietnam War to the present day, focusing on the way that women's incorporation into the American military contributed to both the transformation and redefinition of American masculinity and, by extension, America proper. Building on Susan Jeffords's tenet that "War is a crucible for the distillation of social and cultural relations," this project interrogates the manner in which literary representations of war both reflect and help constitute the American gender system and the way this system in turn offers a historical commentary on inflections of American national identity. It also investigates the ideological complexities particular to war writing as genre, exploring identity politics and the tension surrounding issues of an author's status as veteran or civilian, considering what set of generic criteria constitutes and defines a war narrative, and chronicling the specific inflections of war narratives at particular historical moments. Gender is a principal concern of war narratives, and this project follows that concern by identifying a taxonomy of sub-genres of the war narrative, ranging from what I term the direct participation narrative, the account of one who experiences the war directly, to the mediated narrative, the story of a person who strives to understand someone else's war experience, and by analyzing the way those sub-genres reveal a gendering of the war narrative, both on the level of representational content and on the level of form. This work also explores the prevalence of a generic preference that dictates fidelity to the historical referent of the war being depicted. Authors may (and certainly do) fictionalize war; however, as this work argues, such fictionalization remains tightly constrained by generic conventions and broader ideological considerations of which they form a part. Although no text exists in a vacuum, the war narrative's attempt to represent a geopolitical and historical moment that carries real-life (and real death) consequences enacts a particular set of constraints as it represents America, its people, and that for which they will wage war.
Author: Cristina Alsina Rísquez Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443860697 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 310
Book Description
A fierce national outcry for righteously waging war has long dominated American culture. From at least the wildly popular Spanish-American War and the US military invasion of the Philippines that infuriated Mark Twain, right up to the current Global War on Terrorism, this is a deadly, dark current coursing throughout American history. Meanwhile, dissenting analyses of the “patriotic gore” have until recently been paid scant attention in the popular media. Delving into this history, this probing collection of essays explores ways in which “the compulsive redeployment of innocence” in the launching, cheering, and retelling of America’s wars “endlessly defers a national reckoning,” as the editors astutely state in their introduction. The works in this collection reflect an effort to add more voices where they are desperately needed.
Author: Liz Clarke Publisher: Rutgers University Press ISBN: 1978810156 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 185
Book Description
Introduction -- American Girls and National Identity -- Fighting Femininity on Home Soil in Civil War Films, 1908 to -- American Revolution and Other Wars -- Featuring Preparedness and Peace; or, America and the European War, Part I -- From Serial Queens to Patriotic Heroines; or, America and the European War, Part II -- The American Girl and Wartime Patriotism -- Conclusion.
Author: K. Hagemann Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0230283047 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
This volume addresses war, developing political and national identities and the changing gender regimes of Europe and the Americas between 1775 and 1830. Military and civilian experiences of war and revolution, in free and slave societies, both reflected and shaped gender concepts and practices, in relation to class, ethnicity, race and religion.
Author: Miriam G. Reumann Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520930045 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
When Alfred Kinsey's massive studies Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female appeared in 1948 and 1953, their detailed data spurred an unprecedented public discussion of the nation's sexual practices and ideologies. As they debated what behaviors were normal or average, abnormal or deviant, Cold War Americans also celebrated and scrutinized the state of their nation, relating apparent changes in sexuality to shifts in its political structure, economy, and people. American Sexual Character employs the studies and the myriad responses they evoked to examine national debates about sexuality, gender, and Americanness after World War II. Focusing on the mutual construction of postwar ideas about national identity and sexual life, this wide-ranging, shrewd, and lively analysis explores the many uses to which these sex surveys were put at a time of extreme anxiety about sexual behavior and its effects on the nation. Looking at real and perceived changes in masculinity, female sexuality, marriage, and homosexuality, Miriam G. Reumann develops the notion of "American sexual character," sexual patterns and attitudes that were understood to be uniquely American and to reflect contemporary transformations in politics, social life, gender roles, and culture. She considers how apparent shifts in sexual behavior shaped the nation's workplaces, homes, and families, and how these might be linked to racial and class differences.
Author: Walter L. Hixson Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 030015013X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 389
Book Description
In this major reconceptualization of the history of U.S. foreign policy, Walter Hixson engages with the entire sweep of that history, from its Puritan beginnings to the twenty-first century’s war on terror. He contends that a mythical national identity, which includes the notion of American moral superiority and the duty to protect all of humanity, has had remarkable continuity through the centuries, repeatedly propelling America into war against an endless series of external enemies. As this myth has supported violence, violence in turn has supported the myth. The Myth of American Diplomacy shows the deep connections between American foreign policy and the domestic culture from which it springs. Hixson investigates the national narratives that help to explain ethnic cleansing of Indians, nineteenth-century imperial thrusts in Mexico and the Philippines, the two World Wars, the Cold War, the Iraq War, and today’s war on terror. He examines the discourses within America that have continuously inspired what he calls our “pathologically violent foreign policy.” The presumption that, as an exceptionally virtuous nation, the United States possesses a special right to exert power only encourages violence, Hixson concludes, and he suggests some fruitful ways to redirect foreign policy toward a more just and peaceful world.
Author: U. S. Military Publisher: ISBN: 9781717703781 Category : Languages : en Pages : 90
Book Description
Why are Americans' identity narratives important for national security? This thesis utilizes a qualitative approach to analyze American identity narratives in U.S. history and contemporary society. The historic disagreement over the distribution of the fundamental American value of liberty makes the possibility of a cohesive national identity challenging. Given the effects of globalization, advances in technology, and changes in traditional demographic and sociocultural trends, any form of a national-level, narrative-based identity is not a feasible means to unify Americans. Leaders must make domestic policy decisions that increase inclusiveness in American society and avoid valuing one identity over another. Policymakers must depart from divisive identity policies in favor of those that unify Americans. Any attempt to shape the existing conflict in terms of identity is contrary to a cohesive society and, more importantly, threatens national security. This research led to two policy recommendations. First, the United States must encourage separable identities and emphasize citizens as individuals rather than groups. Second, policymakers must promote "cross-cutting ties," since much of the division in the United States stems from the isolation from one another that many citizens experience. Revamped civic education and national service programs can serve to form those cross-cutting ties. I. INTRODUCTION * A. INTRODUCTION * B. WHY IDENTITY MATTERS * C. HOW AMERICANS DEFINE IDENTITY * D. RESEARCH APPROACH * E. THESIS ROADMAP * II. THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN IDENTITY * A. AMERICAN IDENTITY IN HISTORY: A COMPLEX TALE * B. THE IDENTITY DEBATE: A CRACK IN THE LIBERTY BELL * C. KEY MOMENTS IN THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN IDENTITY * 1. The Revolution * 2. The Civil War * 3. Women's Suffrage * 4. The Civil Rights Movement * D. CONCLUSION * III. AMERICA'S IDENTITY DYSPHORIA * A. GLOBALIZATION'S INFLUENCE * B. THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES * C. AMERICA'S PLACE IN THE WORLD * D. OTHER INFLUENCERS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY * 1. Nationalism * 2. Public Opinion * 3. Ethnicity * 4. Religion * 5. Class * 6. Political Division * 7. Culture Wars * 8. Identity Politics * E. CONCLUSION * IV. IDENTITY IN ROME AND THE U.S.S.R. * A. ROMAN IDENTITY * B. SOVIET IDENTITY * C. SUMMARY * V. THE WAY AHEAD * A. A COMMON PURPOSE: E PLURIBUS UNUM * B. THREE OBSTACLES TO UNITY * 1. Obstacle # 1: Assimilation and Acculturation * 2. Obstacle # 2: Subnational Identities * 3. Obstacle # 3: Subgroup Suppression * C. ONE SOLUTION: ONE NATIONAL IDENTITY-MANY INDIVIDUAL IDENTITIES * D. HOW TO GET THERE: PATRIOTIC BUILDING BLOCKS * 1. Civic Education * 2. National Service * VI. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS * A. TAKEAWAYS * B. AREAS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH * LIST OF REFERENCES * INITIAL DISTRIBUTION LIST
Author: Lewis A. Erenberg Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226215105 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 357
Book Description
The War in American Culture explores the role of World War II in the transformation of American social, cultural, and political life. World War II posed a crisis for American culture: to defeat the enemy, Americans had to unite across the class, racial and ethnic boundaries that had long divided them. Exploring government censorship of war photography, the revision of immigration laws, Hollywood moviemaking, swing music, and popular magazines, these essays reveal the creation of a new national identity that was pluralistic, but also controlled and sanitized. Concentrating on the home front and the impact of the war on the lives of ordinary Americans, the contributors give us a rich portrayal of family life, sexuality, cultural images, and working-class life in addition to detailed consideration of African Americans, Latinos, and women who lived through the unsettling and rapidly altered circumstances of wartime America.
Author: Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 0807895911 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 509
Book Description
This Violent Empire traces the origins of American violence, racism, and paranoia to the founding moments of the new nation and the initial instability of Americans' national sense of self. Fusing cultural and political analyses to create a new form of political history, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg explores the ways the founding generation, lacking a common history, governmental infrastructures, and shared culture, solidified their national sense of self by imagining a series of "Others" (African Americans, Native Americans, women, the propertyless) whose differences from European American male founders overshadowed the differences that divided those founders. These "Others," dangerous and polluting, had to be excluded from the European American body politic. Feared, but also desired, they refused to be marginalized, incurring increasingly enraged enactments of their political and social exclusion that shaped our long history of racism, xenophobia, and sexism. Close readings of political rhetoric during the Constitutional debates reveal the genesis of this long history.
Author: Robin Miskolcze Publisher: U of Nebraska Press ISBN: 0803209878 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 245
Book Description
At a crucial time in American history, narratives of women in command or imperiled at sea contributed to the construction of a national rhetoric. Robin Miskolcze makes her case by way of careful readings of images of women at sea before the Civil War in her book Women and Children First. Though the sea has traditionally been interpreted as the province of men, women have gone to sea as mothers, wives, figureheads, and slaves. In fact, in the nineteenth century, women at sea contributed to the formation of an ethics of survival that helped to define American ideals. This study examines, often for the first time, images of women at sea in antebellum narratives ranging from novels and sermons to newspaper accounts and lithographs. Anglo-American women in antebellum sea narratives are often portrayed as models of American ideals derived from women’s seemingly innate Christian self-sacrifice. Miskolcze argues that these ideals, in conjunction with the maritime directive of “women and children first” during sea disasters, in turn defined a new masculine individualism, one that was morally minded, rooted in Christian principles, and dedicated to preserving virtue. Further, Miskolcze contends that without the antebellum sea narratives portraying the Christian self-sacrifice of women, the abolitionist cause would have suffered. African American women appealed to the directive of “women and children first” to make manifest their own womanhood, and by extension, their own humanity.
Author: Elizabeth Walton Wade
Author: Elizabeth Walton Wade
Author: Cristina Alsina Rísquez
Author: Liz Clarke
Author: K. Hagemann
Author: Miriam G. Reumann
Author: Walter L. Hixson
Author: U. S. Military
Author: Lewis A. Erenberg
Author: Carroll Smith-Rosenberg
Author: Robin Miskolcze