Results by title

Examining the First World War through the lens of the American South

How did World War I affect the American South? Did southerners experience the war in a particular way? How did regional considerations and, more generally, southern values and culture impact the wider war effort? Was there a distinctive southern experience of WWI?

Scholars considered these questions during “Dixie’s Great War,” a symposium held at the University of Alabama in October 2017 to commemorate the centenary of the American intervention in the war. With the explicit intent of exploring iterations of the Great War as experienced in the American South and by its people, organizers John M. Giggie and Andrew J. Huebner also sought to use historical discourse as a form of civic engagement designed to facilitate a community conversation about the meanings of the war.

Giggie and Huebner structured the panels thematically around military, social, and political approaches to the war to encourage discussion and exchanges between panelists and the public alike. Drawn from transcriptions of the day’s discussions and lightly edited to preserve the conversational tone and mix of professional and public voices, Dixie’s Great War: World War I and the American South captures the process of historians at work with the public, pushing and probing general understandings of the past, uncovering and reflecting on the deeper truths and lessons of the Great War—this time, through the lens of the South.

This volume also includes an introduction featuring a survey of recent literature dealing with regional aspects of WWI and a discussion of the centenary commemorations of the war. An afterword by noted historian Jay Winter places “Dixie’s Great War”—the symposium and this book—within the larger framework of commemoration, emphasizing the vital role such forums perform in creating space and opportunity for scholars and the public alike to assess and understand the shifting ground between cultural memory and the historical record.
 

Beyond the battlefield: How race and gender redefined war, identity, and memory in Civil War America.

Race and Gender at War is a collection of essays that illuminates ways that race and gender have persistently shaped the military history of the United States. Editors Lesley J. Gordon and Andrew J. Huebner showcase historians with varied research agendas in the field of “war and society,” a fertile area of inquiry that shares space (and often overlaps) with operational studies inside the broader field of military history. Chronicling more than 150 years of American history, the essays in this volume demonstrate that the tensions and injustices surrounding race, gender, and the military remain relevant and controversial, and continue to roil American politics, society, and culture to this day.

Spanning the two centuries from the 1830s to the present, the collection examines topics such as Choctaw Natives who served in the Confederate Army, the trailblazing but fraught experiences of Black servicemen from the Civil War through World War I, the hypersexualized images of World War II servicemen, and the varied and mutable roles of women in the armed services. Utilizing diverse methodologies, the book examines how these factors influenced everything from military policy to civilian experiences, encompassing topics like martial rhetoric, citizenship, propaganda, and patriotism.
 

CONTRIBUTORS

Kevin Adams / Amanda Bellows / Kari L. Boyd-Weisenberger / Michele Curran Cornell / Lesley J. Gordon / Andrew J. Huebner / Gregory Mixon / Caroline Wood Newhall / Heather Marie Stur / Patrick T. Troester / Chad L. Williams / Fay A. Yarbrough