Cutting a new pattern : uniformed women in the Great War / edited by Barton C. Hacker and Margaret Vining.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Hacker, Barton C., 1935- editor.

Vining, Margaret, editor.

Series:

Smithsonian contribution to knowledge

A Smithsonian Contribution to Knowledge

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Armed Forces--Women--Uniforms--History--20th century.

Armed Forces.

Military uniforms--History--20th century.

Military uniforms.

History.

World War, 1914-1918--Clothing and dress.

World War, 1914-1918.

World War, 1914-1918--Women.

Uniforms--History--20th century.

Uniforms.

Clothing and dress.

Women.

Armed Forces--Women.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xxv, 386 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm.

Place of Publication:

Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Scholarly Press, 2020.

Summary:

"The Smithsonian Institution's commemoration of the First World War Centenary will include a book provisionally entitled "Cutting a New Pattern: Uniformed Women in the Great War." Twenty international historians and museum curators discuss the significance of large numbers of women wearing uniforms during the Great War. This ground-breaking project moves women's uniforms to center stage and expands traditional historical techniques with material culture studies. Scholars in recent decades have begun to pay a great deal of attention to the mobilization of women in the Great War, but why so many women, civilian and military alike, wore uniforms is a question that has scarcely been asked, much less answered. The book's purpose is to bring this question to the fore and show why it matters. Of the many ways the Great War divided the past from the future, few were more significant than the reordered place of women in society. Although women's new status clearly had prewar roots, it just as clearly derived from their wartime participation in uniform. Not only did tens of thousands of women for the first time become members of the uniformed forces, many tens of thousands more wore uniforms as members of an enormous variety of paramilitary or quasi-military services, civilian relief and welfare organizations, and as workers. Uniformed female workers and volunteers for wartime service in such large numbers were unprecedented. Why did so many women wear uniforms and what did it mean? Uniforms had multiple meanings both for the organizations that demanded them and the women who eagerly donned them. Among the most important was that the uniform-whether that of the armed forces, of paramilitary organizations, or of civilian agencies-served to visibly display women's service and thus to make a forceful symbolic claim to full citizenship"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: One. Before the Great War: The Appearance of Women in Uniform, 1854

1914 / Margaret Vining

Two. Fashioning and Performing Martial Femininities: Military Uniforms, Modernity, and Gender Identities in the British Women's Corps, 1914

1921 / Krisztina Robert

Three. Professionalism, Patriotism, and Purity of Purpose: Symbolism and Identity in British and Other Allied Nurses' Uniforms / Keiron Spires

Four. Civilian Women and Uniforms in Britain / Tammy M. Proctor

Five. "If It Made the Man, It Certainly Made the Woman": Uniformity and Canadian Military Nurses / Cynthia Toman

Six. "She Prefers Khaki to the Feminine Mode of Dress": Australian and New Zealand Women in Uniform during the Great War / Raelene Frances

Seven. Mademoiselles in Uniform: Women Employed by the French Army during the Great War / Margaret H. Darrow

Eight. Belgian Women in the Great War: Uniformed or Not? / Luc De Munck

Nine. Identifying Patriots: Women in Uniform in Italy / Allison Scardino Belzer

Ten. The Clothes Make the Woman: Russian Women in Uniform / Laurie S. Stoff

Eleven. "War Is Man Stuff!"? "Uniformed" Women in the (Military) Service of the Habsburg Empire / Claudia Reichl-Ham

Twelve. "We Have to Admit We Remained Quite Inadequate": Ottoman Muslim Women and the Ottoman Red Crescent Society / Nicole A.N.M. van Os

Thirteen. Sworn Virgins and Mothers of the Wounded: Balkan Women and the Great War / Maria Bucur

Fourteen. Call to Action: American Women in War Relief and Preparedness, 1914-1917 / Barton C. Hacker

Fifteen. Cape, Cap, and Caduceus: American Medical Women and the Politics of Uniforms / Marian Moser Jones

Sixteen. Call to Colors: American Women Join the Armed Forces, 1917-1919 / Barton C. Hacker.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781944466350

1944466355

OCLC:

1114369438