June 20, 2023: Beach Reads: Katharine Covino’s Books

[The arrival of summer means a lot of good things, but high on the list for this AmericanStudier is the chance to read for pleasure, preferably on a beach blanket with a view of the crashing surf. For this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I’ll highlight recent or forthcoming books by colleagues and friends. Add your Beach Read ideas and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll always keep toes in the sand!]

Look, young adults can’t boogie-board or suntan all summer long; they need great Beach Reads too. So do their parents, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles, all those who might be seeking to better understand and support the young adults in their lives. Fortunately, my awesome FSU colleague Katharine Covino has co-written (with Elizabeth Englander and an illustrator) a series of perfect such books: The Insanely Awesome Pandemic Playbook: A Humorous Mental Health Guide for Kids (2020); The Insanely Awesome POST Pandemic Playbook: A Humorous Mental Health Guide for Kids (2021); and their newest collaboration, You Got a Phone! (Now Read This Book) (2022). Those books are such great resources that they might make said young adult get off the beach blanket and head out on further adventures—but that just means they’ll return to regale the beach party with all the summertime fun details!

Next Beach Reads tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Beach Reads you’d nominate?

June 19, 2023: Beach Reads: New to Liberty

[The arrival of summer means a lot of good things, but high on the list for this AmericanStudier is the chance to read for pleasure, preferably on a beach blanket with a view of the crashing surf. For this year’s annual Beach Reads series, I’ll highlight recent or forthcoming books by colleagues and friends. Add your Beach Read ideas and nominations for a crowd-sourced weekend post that’ll always keep toes in the sand!]

It’s pretty rare to find a creative writer who is genuinely equally adept at both poetry and fiction—not just at writing them, that is, but at producing stunning works in both genres. Which makes it pretty cool that I’ve had the chance to work in the Fitchburg State University English Studies Department with two such multitalented writers: my past colleague Ian Williams, on whom more in a couple days; and my current colleague DeMisty D. Bellinger. DeMisty’s first two poetry collections, Rubbing Elbows (2017) and Peculiar Heritage (2021), were quite different from each other, and already reflected a writer and voice that could take readers on multilayered journeys across history, culture, identity, and more. But her most recent book, her debut novel New to Liberty (2022), represents another striking and significant step in this evolving and inspiring career. You won’t better a better book to bring in your book bag this summer, I promise!

Next Beach Reads tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Beach Reads you’d nominate?

June 17-18, 2023: Women in War: Tanya Roth’s Guest Post

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to this Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

[NB. This is a repeat of Tanya’s wonderful Guest Post from September 2021.]

Excerpt from Her Cold War: Women in the U.S. Military, 1945-1980] by Tanya L. Roth

 

Chapter 2: The Real Miss America: Recruiting Womanpower 

 

Four years after the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act passed, someone in recruiting decided that the first all-out campaign for womanpower should take place with the 1952 Miss America pageant. It must have seemed like the perfect pairing: the pageant highlighted the best young American women from around the nation, perfectly poised, beautiful, talented, and educated. Recruiters dreamed of signing just these types of young ladies for service in the armed forces. Military publicity officers secured a presence for servicewomen throughout the pageant, ensuring visibility whenever possible. The goal was simple: get Americans to associate servicewomen with the excellent reputation Miss America contestants had at that time and to impart a sense of glamour into Americans’ ideas of women in uniform...

From the beginning...concerns about appearances framed woman power recruiting efforts. Recruiters followed the philosophy that familiarity and femininity would be the most practical and effective ways to entice women to military careers. Military service became advertised as an avenue by which women could become not just ideal American women, but respectable ladies. This approach helped make women’s service acceptable to Americans both inside and outside the armed forces. If military service— especially in wartime—could transform boys into men, then military service could also turn girls into proper ladies. Women belonged in national defense in part because military and government officials saw them as partners in service with men, doing things women did best and capitalizing on their identities as women to do so. In these regards, staging the women’s recruiting drive in conjunction with the 1952 Miss America pageant made sense. The pageant was about thirty years old, and community service was— and still is—an important element of holding the title “Miss America.”  During World War II, the crowned Miss Americas all performed war service activities such as visiting troops and selling war bonds, their version  of supporting national defense.⁵ Scholar Mary Anne Schofield argues that  during wartime, such efforts “supported the propaganda machine that said  that femininity and war work went together.” In the process, the pageant itself solidified the image of Miss America as “the ideal American woman.” By 1952, if military leaders wanted a venue that would showcase servicewomen as the very best of American womanhood and service, the Miss America pageant was the place to be.

[Beach Reads series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?]

June 16, 2023: Women in War: Miyoko Hikiji

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to a Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

On the book and author that can help bring our conversations about veterans into the 21^st century.

There’s no doubt that our narratives about veterans have evolved a lot in the last half-century (the post-Vietnam era, we could call it). Thanks to a number of topics about which I’ve written in this space—controversial activist efforts like Vietnam Veterans Against the War, greater awareness of issues like PTSD, the stories and voices of prominent social and cultural figures like Tim O’Brien and Pat Tillman—the very concept of a veteran now includes many more elements and angles than, I would argue, at any prior point in our history. But on the other hand, it seems likely to me that there’s a certain identity that is still most strongly associated with the concept—the identity of a white male, to put it bluntly—and that quite simply doesn’t align with the realities of our veterans.

As the long history of African American veterans or William Apess’s War of 1812 service remind us, that stereotypical image of veterans has never been sufficient. On a more recent note, better remembering the service and tragic death of Danny Chen would help us broaden our naratives of 21^st century veterans (Chen’s death means he did not serve in a war, but his story demands inclusion in those narratives nevertheless). But alongside those important issues of race and ethnicity, shifting our images of contemporary veterans to include gender and sexuality will be equally meaningful, and especially salient in this 21^st century moment that includes a move toward women in combat roles, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and other such evolutions. And I don’t know of a better voice and book through which to better include and engage with those aspects of identity in our images of veterans than Miyoko Hikiji and her autobiographical and activist book All I Could Be: My Story as a Woman Warrior in Iraq (2013).

Hikiji’s story, as an Asian American young woman from Iowa whose army service took her to the heart of the Iraq War, represents 21^st century American life in a number of distinct but interconnected ways, and she tells that story—along with many stories of both her fellow soldiers and the Iraqis they encountered—with grit, humor, and power. But to my mind, even more telling and significant have been her activisms and advocacies on the home front—on a number of important issues, but especially her work to raise awareness of, and demand responses to, the widespread presence of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) among our armed forces and veterans. I’ve written a good deal in this space about histories and stories that unite veterans, and of course MST is the opposite, an issue and history that not only reveal conflicts within our military, but also have the potential to divide both our veterans’ communities and our national perspectives on them. But as I argued in my fourth book, ignoring such dark histories is neither possible nor effective—we must instead engage with them if we hope to move forward, and Hikiji’s voice and work can most definitely help us do just that.

Guest Post this weekend,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 15, 2023: Women in War: World War II

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to a Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

On three groundbreaking organizations that together helped turn the tide of history.

1)      The Women’s Army Corps (WAC): Without question the more than 150,000 women who served in the Women’s Army Corps (which began as the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in 1942 and then was converted to the WAC a year later) were the single most significant step toward the postwar Women’s Armed Services Integration Act. Many of these women were deployed to the European and Pacific theaters, serving in crucial roles in the war’s difficult final years. Moreover, this was a truly multicultural community, including the all-African American 6888^th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the more than 200 Puerto Rican women who served in the WAC, and the 50 Japanese and Chinese American women recruited as translators. The WAC thus served as a powerful and influential argument for the integration of the armed forces in terms of both gender and race.

2)      The Marine Corps Women’s Reserve (MCWR): The Army might have featured the war’s most prominent roles for women, but the other branches of the armed forces likewise created their own influential such communities. Created in 1943, the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was defined by some of the most inspiring women in American history, such as Minnie Spotted-Wolf, a Blackfoot woman from Montana who became the first Native American woman in the Marines when she enlisted. Or Lucille McClarren, the stenographer whose March 1943 enlistment made her the organization’s first private. Or Ruth Cheney Streeter, the clothing designer and mother of four who in January 1943 was commissioned as major and made director of the MCWR for the duration of the war.

3)      The Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs): Even the women who served in more fully civilian roles did so in courageous and groundbreaking ways, as reflected by the more than 1000 pilots who became the first women to fly American military aircraft. Organized into the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) and the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD), these skilled pilots helped move vital aircraft throughout the United States; and in this still-early era of flight they did so at considerable risk, as 38 WASPs died in accidents in the course of the war. Like all the women who served in World War 2, these pilots didn’t just help change the culture of the American military; they contributed to ongoing changes in every layer of American society that would only accelerate in the postwar decades.

Last war women tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 14, 2023: Women in War: The Civil War

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to a Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

First and foremost, I highly recommend archivist and historian DeAnne Blanton’s three-part article “Women Soldiers of the Civil War” from the National Archives’ Prologue Magazine. I’m not going to repeat everything that’s there, so will instead just highlight interesting AmericanStudies contexts for three of the women about whom Blanton writes:

1)      Frances Clayton: As this University of Virginia Special Collections blog post on Clayton (sometimes spelled Clalin) indicates, there are significant ambiguities and uncertainties surrounding her Civil War service. But even if Clayton did not serve in the military and/or see combat as she claimed repeatedly throughout her postwar life, the justifiably famous photograph of her in a U.S. Army uniform reflects an important element of every one of these figures and stories: their refusal to conform to gender norms, in ways that in the 21^st century might connect to identities like nonbinary or transgender. Women in war have always pushed the envelope on such conversations, and whatever the exact details of her experiences Clayton was no exception.

2)      Sarah Edmonds (Seelye): While some of the individual stories of Sarah Edmonds’ Civil War action are likewise ambiguous, there’s less overall doubt that she was part of the Union Army for many battles and campaigns, both in and out of disguise as a man. The difference depended in large part on whether she was fulfilling her official role as a nurse or her more unofficial but certainly still vital ones as spy, messenger, and the like. Those are of course quite distinct, and most Civil War nurses did not, as far as any of us know, moonlight as secret agents (although obviously Walt Whitman did). But Edmonds nonetheless reminds us that countless women served in the Civil War, and honestly that the line between combatant and non-combatant was never as clear-cut as gender norms might make it seem.

3)      Albert D.J. Cashier: Despite the uncertainties, both Clayton and Edmonds were relatively well-known in their own lifetimes; the same cannot really be said for Albert D.J. Cashier, since he did not entirely exist. Or perhaps the exact opposite is true, since Irish immigrant Jennie Irene Hodgers lived as Cashier and thus as a man for more than half a century, long after their Civil War service and up until their 1915 death. Since that second life seems to have begun with that Civil War service, it’s possible to see Cashier as profoundly representative of this complex community of Civil War women soldiers; since it was so extended and secretive, it’s possible to see Cashier as quite different from any of their peers. But however we see Cashier, they’re just one of these many compelling and important American stories and histories.

Next war women tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?

June 13, 2023: Women in War: Molly Pitcher

[June 12^th marks the 75^th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act, an important step toward a more inclusive America on multiple levels. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy that Act and other histories of women in war, leading up to a Guest Post from one of the best scholars of those histories and issues!]

On the iconic war hero who might or might not have existed, and why she matters in any case.

I can think of few more AmericanStudies ways to analyze popular memory and prominence than through the eleven rest stops on the New Jersey turnpike—and by that measure, Molly Pitcher and Clara Barton are the two most famous women in New Jersey history and culture (if that last phrase isn’t an oxymoron—I kid, Jerseyites, I kid). Pitcher’s is also the only one of the eleven rest stop referents that wasn’t an actual name, and that might not even link to an individual figure—some historians believe that the name does refer to one woman, Mary Ludwig Hays, who followed her husband and the Continental Army to the Battle of Monmouth and found herself not only serving water to the soldiers but even taking over her wounded husband’s artillery job; but others have linked the name to a number of other Revolutionary-era women who performed one or another of those roles (camp followers, water carriers, and so on), including Margaret Corbin.

So Molly Pitcher is as much a folkloric as a historical figure, one not unlike Paul Bunyan, John Henry, or, perhaps more accurately, Johnny Appleseed. Because like Appleseed’s inspiration John Chapman (about whom see that hyperlinked, wonderful Guest Post by William Kerrigan), women like Hays and Corbin most definitely existed; the details of their lives and experiences are as partial and uncertain as most any 18^th century histories, even those of the Revolution’s most prominent leaders, but there’s plenty of information out there, such as at the various stories linked in my first paragraph’s closing sentences, and the Molly Pitcher legend provides an excellent starting point for researching and learning about these historical figures. Even absent such research, any collective memory of “Molly Pitcher” itself adds women to our narratives of these Revolutionary war battles and histories, producing a more full and accurate picture of those histories as a result.

I’d take that argument one step further, however. I’ve written on multiple occasions, including in this post on Judith Sargent Murray and this one on John and Abigail Adams, about the striking cultural, social, and political voices and roles of Revolutionary-era American women (including not only Murray and Adams but also Phillis Wheatley, Annis Boudinot Stockton, and others). Indeed, it’s fair to say that such women help us to see the era’s possibilities for gender and society as likewise revolutionary, and as foreshadowing and influencing the 19^th century women’s movement. That some of these women, including Adams and Stockton, achieved such success in relationship to their husbands’ lives and work—just as, that is, Hays and Corbin did in relationship to their husband’s wartime efforts—reflects some of the era’s limitations and obstacles; limitations and obstacles that all these women, like Molly Pitcher, pushed well beyond.

Next war women tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other stories or histories you’d highlight?