Maternalism, anarchism, and women’s resistance to World War I

Topic: Essentialised conceptions of 'womanhood' historically associated the 'fair sex' with peace and a revulsion towards violence (a male proclivity). Women, as nurturers, carers, and propagators of the human species, were naturally pacifistic in their outlook-- so biological determinists insisted. While some 'maternalists' embraced this gendered binary in the early twentieth-century, others grounded their opposition to US participation in the Great War in radically different politics.

This week's seminar examines the spectrum of American women's resistance to World War I. We'll also consider how it was that, despite widespread hostility to US entry into this conflict, many American women were seemingly coopted-- or perhaps coerced-- rather swiftly into supporting a war that tapped into a deep reservoir of gendered tropes about maternal duty, mother love, 'cowardly slackers' and heroic masculinity.

NOTE: In this seminar, we'll also discuss exactly what's required for the first assignment due in week 5.

Seminar questions:

• why was there so much opposition to US entry into the 'Great War' before 1917? In what ways did ideas about gender influence anti-war sentiment?
• why was Emma Goldman such a potent hate figure for the mainstream US press? What did you learn from your foray into contemporary newspapers? What did you find most surprising/striking in the press stories you located?
• how did advocates of US participation in the war mobilise gender in the service of their cause?
• what made militarists' mobilisation of gendered roles and identities seemingly so effective?
• how did race and class inflect women's activism in opposition to-- or support of-- the war?

Required reading/listening:

Primary source research mini-assignment: Using the 'advanced search' function of the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database (via the Warwick library), search the New York Times, Washington Post or Los Angeles Times for press stories on Emma Goldman and resistance to the draft in WWI published in 1917. Save your press story as a pdf and be prepared to share it with classmates in our seminar.

Watch my 3-minute guide to using ProQuestLink opens in a new window.

Listen to the song 'I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be A Soldier': http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4942

Susan Zeiger, 'She Didn't Raise Her Boy to Be a Slacker: Motherhood, Conscription, and the Culture of the First World War,' Feminist Studies 22, 1 (1996), pp. 6-39

Lynn Dumenil, 'Women's Reform Organizations and Wartime Mobilization in World War I-Era Los Angeles,' Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 10, 2 (April 2011), pp. 213-45

Supplementary reading:

Nikki Brown, Private Politics and Public Voices: Black Women's Activism from World War I to the New Deal (2006) e-book

Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (2010), esp. ch.3, 'The Obligation to Volunteer: Women and Coercive Voluntarism'

Christopher Capozzola, “The Only Badge Needed Is Your Patriotic Fervor: Vigilance, Coercion, and the Law in World War I America,” Journal of American History 88 (March 2002)

Nancy Gentile Ford, The Great War and America: Civil-Military Relations during World War I (2008) ch. 3, 'Mobilizing Public Opinion and Suppressing Dissent'

Susan Grayzel, 'Women and Men' in John Horne (ed), A Companion to World War I (2010) e-book

Julia L Mickenberg, 'New Women in Red: Revolutionary Russia, Feminism and the First Red Scare,' Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 18, 1 (2019), pp.56-80

Linda Schott, 'The Woman's Peace Party and the Moral Basis for Women's Pacifism,' Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 8, 2, Women and Peace (1985), pp. 18-24

Michael Willrich, 'Home Slackers: Men, the State, and Welfare in Modern America,' Journal of American History 87: 2 (September 2000), pp. 460–89