War and Gender

Richard Fogarty, University at Albany, SUNY

This course will explore the role of gender in shaping war and experiences of war, and the role of war in shaping understandings and expressions of gender. Readings will focus primarily, though not exclusively, on these themes in European and United States history since the eighteenth century, and will address theoretical concerns as well as the lived experiences of people from all walks of life. Without forgetting the importance of battles and military institutions in the history of warfare, this course will seek to place war firmly in its broadest social and cultural contexts.

We will proceed largely chronologically. However, we will begin with a broad theoretical overview, Joshua Goldstein’s War and Gender, which will orient us to many of the main thematic issues we’ll address for the rest of the semester. We’ll then trace these briefly from the early modern period through the nineteenth century, before exploring developments in the twentieth century in great detail. Since we will proceed mostly chronologically, themes and issues will emerge and reemerge repeatedly—war as a gendered activity, changing (and not so changing) notions of masculinity and femininity in relation to war, war and sexuality, gendered notions of violence, sexual orientation and military service, gender identity and military service, the gendered language of war and violence, gender and the emergence of total war, the wartime experiences of women and men, and many more—and by the end of the semester we will have had an opportunity to think about them in a wide variety of contexts.