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Of little comfort : war widows, fallen soldiers, and the remaking of nation after the Great War / Erika Kuhlman.
LIBRA D639.W7 K84 2012
Available from offsite location
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Kuhlman, Erika A., 1961-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- World War, 1914-1918--Women.
- World War, 1914-1918.
- War widows--Government policy--United States--History--20th century.
- War widows.
- War widows--Government policy--Germany--History--20th century.
- War widows--Government policy--Western countries--History--20th century.
- World War, 1914-1918--Social aspects--United States.
- World War, 1914-1918--Social aspects--Germany.
- Nationalism--History--20th century.
- Nationalism.
- History.
- Transnationalism--History--20th century.
- Transnationalism.
- Government policy.
- United States--Social conditions--1918-1932.
- United States.
- Social conditions.
- Germany--Social conditions--1918-1933.
- Germany.
- Western countries.
- Physical Description:
- x, 225 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Place of Publication:
- New York : New York University Press, [2012]
- Summary:
- During and especially after World War I, the millions of black-clad widows on the streets of Europe's cities were a constant reminder that war caused carnage on a vast scale. But widows were far more than just a reminder of the war's fallen soldiers; they were literal and figurative actresses in how nations crafted their identities in the interwar era. In this extremely original study, Erika Kuhlman compares the ways in which German and American widows experienced their postwar status, and how that played into the cultures of mourning in their two nations: one defeated, the other victorious. Each nation used widows and war dead as symbols to either uphold their victory or disengage from their defeat, but Kuhlman, parsing both German and U.S. primary sources, compares widows' lived experiences to public memory. For some widows, government compensation in the form of military-style awards sufficed. For others, their own deprivations, combined with those suffered by widows living in other nations, became the touchstone of a transnational awareness of the absurdity of war and the need to prevent it. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- An Army of Widows
- Trostlose Stunden : German War Widows
- The War Widows' Romance : Victory and Loss in the United States
- The Transnationalization of Soldiers, Widows, and War Relief
- "The Other Trench" : Remarriage, Pronatalism, and the Rebirthing of the Nation
- Epilogue.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- ISBN:
- 9780814748398
- 0814748392
- 9780814748404
- 0814748406
- 9780814749050
- 0814749054
- OCLC:
- 733232559
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