Becoming Visible: Gendering the Study of Men at War

Abstract

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Saving Civilization: The "Monuments Men" in History and Memory

“…67 Indeed, a privileged space has been reserved in culture and memory for the male soldier. 68 The ideal traits of martial masculinity-bravery, strength, endurance, determination, loyalty, vigor, leadership, confidence, pragmatism, resourcefulness, virility, stoicism, and heterosexuality-all characterized members of a martial brotherhood whose other defining trait in the Second World War was its detachment from home. These qualities forged a soldierly identity, in the absence of women and domestic comfort, with the experience of battle as a rite of initiation.…”

Gender nonconformity and military internment: curating the Knockaloe slides

“…Yet the slides also represent an opportunity to diversify the curation of military history, which still often lags behind in even the inclusion of marginalised groups whose representation has become commonplace elsewhere in the museum sector. Despite substantial historical scholarship addressing the 'shifting gender boundaries' precipitated by the First World War (for an overview see Rachamimov 2012, 291;Robb and Pattinson 2017b), and a growing conviction among historians that military history should be treated as gendered history (Hagemann and Schüler-Springorum 2002, x) some war museums still struggle to include even cisgender women, let alone trans possibility (Brandon 2010). The Knockaloe slides, considered critically, offer a chance to prompt a radicaland, I will argue, both academically and politically valuableshift in military curatorial practice.…”

“These Are Not Normal Times:” Masculinity and Femininity in Romance Pulps from the Second World War

“…The increased demand for female labor served as an invitation to women to step out of the domestic sphere into a traditionally male‐dominated public sphere. The public sphere thus became a space in which “meanings about gender [were] produced, negotiated, and circulated” (Robb and Pattinson 8) while the war unveiled “what in constructions of gender [was] negotiable and flexible, and what [was] not” (Peniston‐Bird and Vickers 1‐2). These shifting notions of gender often played out in popular culture, where “public images are subject to sudden and temporary changes imposed by economic need” even while underlying ideas about gender remained the same (Rupp 4).…”