Gender as construct and 'cause'?: The Spanish-American War (1898-99)

Over the past twenty years, military historians and scholars of US foreign relations have embraced gender as a category of analysis that helps explain why the United States has gone to war, as well as how processes of mobilisation for war functioned by assigning particular roles, responsibilities and demeanours to men and women. But scholars working in these sub-fields of the historical profession haven't always taken kindly to gender analysis. (For a critique of Kristin Hoganson's work, see Frank Ninkovich's essay, listed under 'supplementary readings.')

Our central question for discussion today is what-- and how much--does a gender analysis illuminate when we study war? In particular, we'll focus on the Spanish-American war (1898-99) as a conflict that was arguably 'provoked' by gender ideology to a greater degree than other US wars.

Seminar questions:

• The claim that gender 'provoked'-- or 'caused'-- war is most often made by historians with reference to the Spanish-American war over the fate of Cuba. Thinking speculatively, why might this particular war's origins lend themselves more readily to a gendered explanation than other conflicts' causes?
• Did gender 'cause' this war in your view? (To help think this through, consider what other explanatory factors may also, or alternatively, have precipitated this 'war of choice' for the US.)
• If gender doesn't directly or exclusively 'cause' war, what more nuanced claims might we make about how ideas about gender and sexuality inform US war-making, drawing also on Dean's examples from earlier and later US wars?
• How do the newsreels help illustrate gender ideology at work in 1898?

Required viewing/reading:

Note that all the assigned book chapters and journal articles for the module are electronically accessible from the library. You can link to the Talis Aspire reading list here.

If you haven't studied this episode of US history before, get quickly up-to-speed with some historical background from the Library of Congress, 'The World of 1898,' before you continue to the required seminar readings: https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/intro.html

Primary sources: Library of Congress, Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures collection

Explore a selection of contemporary newsreels of the Spanish-American-Cuban war, watching them in particular with a view to how/where gender constructs appear. Make sure to watch the three I've selected here as well as a few others that catch your eye to get a feel for the flavour of the time and of this brand new cinematic medium:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/spanish-american-war-in-motion-pictures/about-this-collection/

'Roosevelt's Rough Riders': https://www.loc.gov/item/98500909/

'Love and war': https://www.loc.gov/item/98501279/

'Blanket-tossing a new recruit': https://www.loc.gov/item/98501030/

Robert Dean, 'Gender as a Cause of War' in Kara Vuic (ed), The Routledge History of Gender, War and the U.S. Military (2017), pp.167-84, e-book

Kristin L Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine American Wars (1998); extract from the book, included in Dennis Merrill & Thomas G Paterson (eds), Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, Vol. 1 (7th ed, 2010), Hoganson

Supplementary reading on this week's topic:

Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (1995), ch.5, 'Theodore Roosevelt: Manhood, Nation and "Civilization"', pp.170-216

Kristin L Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine American Wars (1998)

Richard F Hamilton, 'McKinley's Backbone,' Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, 3 (Sept. 2006), pp. 482-92

Frank Ninkovich, 'Cuba, The Philippines, and the Hundred Years' War,' Reviews in American History 27, 3 (Sept. 1999), pp. 444-51

Joan W Scott, 'Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,' American Historical Review 91, 5 (Dec. 1986), pp.1053-75

Wider reading on war, sex and gender:

Aaron Belkin, Bring Me Men: Military Masculinity and the Benign Facade of American Empire (2012)

Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (1995)

Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacott, Gendering War Talk (1993)

Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You?: The Militarization of Women's Lives (1983)

Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives (2000) e-book

Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (2001)

Melissa S. Herbert, Camouflage Isn't Only for Combat: Gender, Sexuality and Women in the Military (1998) e-book

Donna B. Knaff, 'Homos, Whores, Rapists and the Clap: American Military Sexuality Since the Revolutionary War,' in Kara Vuic (ed), Routledge History of Gender, War and the US Military (2017) e-book

Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin (eds), The Women and War Reader (1998)

Martha E. McSally, 'Defending America in Mixed Company: Gender in the U.S. Armed Forces,' Daedalus,140, 3 (Summer 2011), pp. 148-63

Simona Sharoni et al, Handbook on Gender and War (2016) e-book

Laura Sjoberg, Gender, War and Conflict (2014)

Laura Sjoberg and Sandra Via, Gender, War and Militarism: Feminist Perspectives (2010) e-book

Kara Vuic (ed), The Routledge History of Gender, War and the U.S. Military (2017) e-book