Fallen women and forgotten men [electronic resource] : Gendered concepts of community, home, and nation, 1932-1945.

9780591203271

1996

1 online resource (248 p.)

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Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-11, Section: A, page: 4894.

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My dissertation examines the role of the state in redefining gender and citizenship during the Great Depression and World War II. My study begins in 1932, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised Americans a "new deal," and extends to 1945, when military victory brought an era of successive national crises to a close. I emphasize that this was a period of immense political transformation, characterized by shifting concepts of citizenship, statehood, and national community. Paying close attention to the masculine imagery that developed within a range of New Deal and wartime agencies, I argue that Roosevelt administrators drew on residual images of youthful and breadwinning manhood to render new concepts of citizenship and statehood familiar. I argue that Roosevelt administrators used idealized masculine images such as the manly WPA worker of the depression and the Nisei soldier of World War II to make new claims about national community as well. Recent critical scholarship on nationalism and liberal political theory shapes the theoretical framework for my work. However, my dissertation also undertakes a more conventional institutional analysis of a range of New Deal and wartime programs, including the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Office of Civilian Defense and the War Relocation Authority. By examining how gender operated within a range of New Deal and wartime agencies, I emphasize the adaptability of particular gender concepts to a range of political contexts in the vastly transformative Roosevelt years. More generally, by taking gender as my primary category of analysis in approaching the policies and actions of the Roosevelt administration, I illustrate the close interconnections between gender and politics in the depression and wartime years.

Books / Online / Dissertations & Theses

English

July 12, 2011

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 1996.

Yale University.