Review of “Material Traces of War: Stories of Canadian Women and Conflict, 1914- 1945” by Stacey Barker, Krista Cooke and Molly McCullough

Review of Material Traces of War: Stories of Canadian Women and Conflict, 1914- 1945 by Stacey Barker, Krista Cooke and Molly McCullough

Belonging to the Imperial Nation: Rethinking the History of the First World War in Britain and Its Empire

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the First World War in 2014–18, the British government set aside funds for a range of commemorative activities. These included a number of “engagement centres” that aimed to bring together academics and local community members in addition to providing separate arts-related programming.1 The Imperial War Museum reworked its main First World War galleries, which opened with great fanfare at the centenary’s start. This denotes a kind of publicly sanctioned interest in a war that Britain had won, after all, but that popular memory had enshrined as something quite different, something that required solemn reflection about the costs of war and reckoning of sacrifices rather than celebrations of victory and service.

Fall 2013 Newsletter of the Sarah Isom Center

The official newsletter of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/isom_report/1010/thumbnail.jp

Did Women Have a Great War? Gender and the Global Conflict of 1914-1918

The title of my talk pays homage to a classic and pioneering essay in women's history: Joan Kelly's 1977 "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" Kelly's intent was to see if -- by asking a question that placed women at the center of a world event -- we could challenge (as she put it) "accepted schemes of periodization." Following Kelly, the question "Did women have a Great War?" offers a starting point to consider whether or not we can separate the collective wartime and postwar experiences of women from those of their male counterparts. If so, how might a female-centered perspective enhance our understanding of the First World War? In order to address these questions, the talk will explore what the war meant, in at least a few ways, to women qua women in all its messy complexity by drawing upon a range of sources from visual and material evidence to government documents to women's own texts. It will then suggest what focusing on gendered experiences does to the history of the First World War and perhaps to modern war more generally.Department of Theater at The Ohio State University in conjunction with its production "Forbidden Zones: The Great War

The Isom Report - Fall 2016

The official newsletter of the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/isom_report/1003/thumbnail.jp

The Origins of Keep Calm and Carry On

By now, it feels like there can’t be anyone who hasn’t seen the sign with its white letters on the sharp red background: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Even more likely, we’ve seen what feel like infinite variations: “keep calm and smile on;” “keep calm and study hard;” “keep calm and rock on;” or even “sod calm and get angry.” But behind the popular resurgence of this 1939 British wartime slogan is an important story about how the age of air power shifted the relationship of individuals and their states in ways with which we are still grappling. What role would non-combatants have in the wars after 1918? What could states ask of their entire populations—from children to the elderly and including men and women of all walks of life? What does it mean that they asked them to “keep calm and carry on?” And why does this development still matter? Sue Grayzel, a University of Mississippi professor of history, received her A.B. Magna cum laude with Highest Honors in History and Literature from Harvard University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Late Modern European History from the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of Women\u27s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War, which won the British Council Book Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies in 2000; Women and the First World War, At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz, and The First World War: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford St. Martins, 2012) for the Bedford Series in History and Culture. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/ted

At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz

Although the Blitz has come to symbolize the experience of civilians under attack, Germany first launched air raids on Britain at the end of 1914 and continued them during the First World War. With the advent of air warfare, civilians far removed from traditional battle zones became a direct target of war rather than a group shielded from its impact. This is a study of how British civilians experienced and came to terms with aerial warfare during the First and Second World Wars. Memories of the World War I bombings shaped British responses to the various real and imagined war threats of the 1920s and 1930s, including the bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War and, ultimately, the Blitz itself. The processes by which different constituent bodies of the British nation responded to the arrival of air power reveal the particular role that gender played in defining civilian participation in modern war.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/libarts_book/1026/thumbnail.jp