No (Wo)man’s Land: Writing history at the intersections of gender and First World War Studies

No (Wo)man’s Land: Writing history at the intersections of gender and First World War Studies

Date: 10th June 2024 starting at 5pm BST.

Location: Available to attend in person at the Michael Sadler RBLT (LG.X04) or online via Zoom (link will be shared closer to the event date).

The School of History extends the warmest welcome for you to join us in celebrating Professor Jessica Meyer's inaugural lecture, 'No (Wo)man’s Land: Writing history at the intersections of gender and First World War Studies'. The lecture will be followed by an interactive Q&A and a celebratory reception.

Abstract:

In 2014, at the start of the centenary commemorations of the First World War, broadcaster Kate Adie wrote an article in The Guardian in which she claimed that ‘the history of the war has been almost entirely written by men. Only a small number of female historians – notably Barbara Tuchman – have specialised in military subjects, while feminist academics have highlighted specific contributions made by women.’ For a feminist academic whose work in the field of First World War studies encompasses military subjects that extend beyond specific contributions of women, this inaccurate popular perception was frustrating if unsurprising. In the decade since then, the contribution of women to the field has only increased further, expanding and deepening scholarly understanding of the war, including the gender history of the war.

In this inaugural, I will explore this expansion as it has developed both in academic scholarship and public perception of the war. I will consider the ways in which the developing field of the history of masculinities has helped to shape knowledge and understanding of both men’s and women’s experiences of war, and how the gender history of the war intersects with histories of medicine and popular culture, as well as military history. I will ask what role the centenary played in driving and disseminating such work, but also the barriers that emerged to communicating complex ideas about gender history to wider audiences and how these might be overcome in future.

I will also discuss the intersecting communities of female scholarship – historians, archivists, cultural critics, administrators – whose work has shaped my own over the past two decades. In doing so, I will show how war studies, and First World War studies in particular, has developed as a particularly fruitful interdisciplinary space for the cultivation of understanding of gender history and feminist historical practice.

Image credit

'Field Marshal Lord John French inspects the Glasgow Battalion, Women's Volunteer Reserve, ca. 1915'. Copyright Imperial War Museum, item Q 108005, used under non-commercial license.