History Commons^™

Bureaus Of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Comparing The Roles Of Women In The Special Operations Executive And The Office Of Strategic Services During World War Ii, Adaline Nolley

Senior Honors Theses

In 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill created the Special Operations Executive. The SOE was one of the first government agencies to recruit female spies. In 1941, United States President Franklin Roosevelt commissioned the Office of Strategic Services, which also employed women. The organizations approached the concept of female agents differently. The OSS maintained female staff in domestic offices, but employed foreign women as agents. The SOE recruited women to go abroad, as they were less suspicious than men in occupied territories. The study of female staff in the OSS and the SOE allow historians to understand roles of women …

Parameters Spring 2022, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

From The Editor, Antulio J. Echevarria Ii

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

Rethinking Female Urinary Devices For The Us Army, Andrea M. Peters, Michael A. Washington, Lolita Burrell, James Ness

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

As women assume more combat roles in the US military and continue to operate in austere environments with varied mission sets, the Department of Defense must rethink its approach to equipment and uniform development to accommodate female anatomical differences. This article analyzes the results of a study conducted during the Sandhurst Military Skills Competition at the United States Military Academy to determine the effectiveness of commercial off-the-shelf products the Army has adopted to aid female urination—products used by competition participants that may not be the best or healthiest options for women.

The Challenges Of Lesbian Senior Leaders In The Army Branch Of The Department Of Defense, Ella Nunley-Spaights

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions of lesbian senior leaders and the types of challenges they experience while serving in the Army Branch of the Department of Defense. A secondary purpose of this study was to identify strategies lesbian senior leaders employ to overcome perceived challenges while serving in the Army Branch of the Department of Defense.

Methodology: This phenomenological study described the lived experiences of seven lesbian senior leaders serving in the Army who were retired from service within the past five years. Convenience and snowball sampling were utilized to identify women who …

"Between The Two Great Battlefields:" Scottish Medical Women's Encounters With The Eastern Front, Fiona Gale Holter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation discusses the role of medical women on the battlefront during the First World War. Using the Scottish Women’s Hospitals as a case study, it argues that frontline medical women occupied a liminal space on the fronts. As both witnesses and participants, they confronted wounds, trauma, and violence wrought by total war. Since this was typically reserved for the combatant, contemporary notions of gender refused to acknowledge medical women’s authority within the war story. This dissertation employs medical women’s wartime experiences to argue that their war story redefines our understandings of combatancy, allowing us to see it as a …

Women And Violence In Revolutionary Russia, 1860-1925, Jenny R. Findsen

All Master's Theses

Russian women engaged in public violence during the late imperial and revolutionary periods in various ways and for a variety of reasons. This study examines traditional gender roles in Russia, and women’s motivations for female terrorism as well as military and police service. It establishes that women broke through patriarchal social barriers through violence, even while still embracing traditionally feminine notions of self-sacrifice for the common good. Based on primary sources such as memoirs, official policies, and newspaper articles, I argue that Russian women committed both illegal and officially sanctioned violence to achieve diverse personal, ideological, political, material, and familial …

Collegiate Codebreakers: Winthrop, Women, And War, Marlana Mayton

Graduate Theses

During World War II, college-aged women from across the nation filled United States Army and Navy secretive cryptanalysis facilities to help win the war. For many women, colleges facilitated involvement in codebreaking. Through information gathered in oral histories, this thesis primarily explores war related programs at American colleges and the young women that became cryptanalysts. Academic institutions, like Winthrop College, became the nuclei for colligate codebreakers. They acted as early crypt education centers, through the offering of cryptology classes, functioned as recruitment centers, and operated as essential training hubs. While in school, young women were saturated by a climate of …

Women Of The War: Female Espionage Agents For The Confederacy, Sarah Stellhorn

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

Although historians have frequently examined the role of women on the home front during the Civil War, women who contributed to the cause in more direct ways, such as espionage, are often neglected. An in-depth examination of specific females spying for the Confederacy, such as Rose O’Neal Greenhow and Belle Boyd, proves that their actions, both remarkable and uncharacteristic of women at the time, had a direct impact on the war. A vast network of spies and smugglers existed not only in the southern and border states but also throughout the North, even in Washington D.C. itself. This network was …

The Perfect Vessel Of Grief: Women And Mourning Photography, Savannah Labbe

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

After her father died, the girl in the photo above went through a highly ritualized and formalized process of Victorian mourning. This process radically changed with the invention of photography in 1839. Now one could record the grieving process, which is what the photograph above accomplished. The photograph is a typical mourning portrait, depicting the mourner (the little girl in this case), with the photo of her deceased loved one in her hands. Like so many other photographs, this one recorded the grieving process, allowing loved ones to keep a piece of that person even after their death. 19th-century photographs …

Fashion Under The Swastika: An Analysis Of Women's Fashion During The Third Reich, Ayrika Johnson

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

This paper works to demonstrate women's fashion in Germany during WWII and how it was impacted by Nazi culture. Within Hitler's Germany, there was a desire to create a uniform community separate from the rest of the world, and greater than all others. Fashion is one way to analyze how the Nazis tried to accomplish this goal. The paper relies on speeches, magazines, and their fashion pages, and advertisement clippings to uncover the social, economic, and political factors at play. By using fashion as a means of expressing cultural, societal, economic, and political goals, the desires of the Nazi government …

The Experiences And Contributions Of Women Following The British Army During The Seven Years’ War, James Dennison

Major Papers

For much of history women followed with European armies on campaign. They filled auxiliary roles for the army and supported their men. Though history has often overlooked them, they are consistently present in primary material. Camp women during the Seven Years’ War (1754 to 1763) lived a hard life, much like soldiers. Yet despite attempts by officers to limit their numbers, as well as the difficult and dangerous living conditions, women continued to follow the army and proved to be both helpful and a hindrance to military officials. This paper examines the experiences of these women and in doing so …

Visual Culture Project: Confederate War Etchings: Searching For Arms By Adalbert Johann Volck, Lynn B. Hatcher

Student Publications

Adalbert Johann Volck’s 1861 sketch of Union soldiers, “Searching for Arms,” represents a substantial contribution to the narrative about gender relations during the American Civil War. This simple, small sketch offers the observer a window into the past. It is a collision of symbols and meaning—from gender to war to the household—all wrapped up in one image. This is a portrait sketch of a woman being invaded in her domestic, private sphere, revealing so much about gender relations during the time. The mistress herself seemed to embody a vast range of sentiments such as anger, fear, frailty, and strength, proving …

Beneath The Mulberry Tree: Sarah Edmonds And Women In Memory, Anika N. Jensen

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

In her memoir Nurse and Spy in the Union Army, Sarah Emma Edmonds, a woman fighting in the Union Army disguised as a man, employed florid diction and a subtle romantic flare to illustrate an emotional and confounding moment in the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam: discovering another woman undercover. Edmonds writes of the “pale, sweet face of a youthful soldier,” of a boy trembling from blood loss who, she knew, had only a few more minutes on earth. He tasted his last sip of water, and with his remaining breaths the soldier beckoned Edmonds closer and uttered a …

Understanding Women Leaders In A Male-Dominated Profession: A Study Of The United States Marine Corps' Women Generals, Marianne S. Waldrop

Dissertations

Contemporary organizations are increasingly realizing that future success requires a significant shift in leadership due to globalization, flattened organizational command and control structures, rapid technology growth, and the shift from manufacturing to service industries. Specifically, current leaders and scholars have begun to recognize the importance of employee diversity within organizations, and in particular the critical need to tap into the underutilized half of the population—women. Yet, the efforts to recruit, develop or retain women has been minimal, leading to metaphors such as glass ceiling and labyrinth, which characterize the institutional, social and personal barriers women encounter when seeking high-level leadership …

The War Of The Two Jeannes And The Role Of The Duchess In Lordship In The Fourteenth Century, Katrin E. Sjursen

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In the mid-fourteenth century, two women headed opposing parties in a civil war for control of the duchy of Brittany in France. Conventional scholarship explains their involvement in politics and warfare as exceptions possible only during emergencies. Contemporary chronicles and the letters of the two women themselves, however, tell another story, one in which these two women participated in politics and warfare even before their husbands entered captivity. Their participation makes sense if we recognize that medieval society understood lordship as a form of shared governance performed by a noble couple. While separate roles did exist for the husband and …

Women And World War Ii At Gettysburg College, Keira B. Koch

Student Publications

An examination of the women attending Gettysburg College during World War II. This project examined what the women did and experienced during the World War II, along with analyzing campus culture and life.

A Case Study Of Melita Maschmann: Women And The Third Reich, Lynda Maureen Willett

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The case study of Melita Maschmann shows that despite the deep manipulation and gender discrimination she was subject to in her youth by National Socialism Maschmann made her own free choices as an adult and chose to zealously absorb its political ideology. The general assumption is that National Socialism, and fascism, were male dominated political ideologies in which women played a passive role, such as that professed by Gertrude Scholtz-Klink. However, many women found National Socialism appealing and became active supporters of its ideals. The purpose of this paper is to explore that appeal and analyze why certain women such …

Call To Duty: Women And World War I, Jennifer D. Keene

History Faculty Articles and Research

"Watching loved ones depart, uncertain if they would return—this was an experience that women around the world shared during the Great War. The continual scene of women sending men off to fight was troubling; paradoxically, it was also a familiar, traditional ritual that reinforced gender roles within western societies. "

Shepherd, Katherine A. (Sc 1156), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 1156. Desert Storm letters (14) written by different servicemen to Katherine Shepherd, Campbellsville, Kentucky, who was preparing a presentation for the Campbellsville Junior High School about the service in the Persian Gulf War. Letters answer specific questions asked by Shepherd.

Coombs Family Collection (Mss 349), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Collection 349. Correspondence, photographs, business records and miscellaneous papers of the Coombs, Robertson and related families of Warren and Simpson counties in Kentucky and of Alabama, Texas and Tennessee. Includes correspondence, personal papers and research of Elizabeth Robertson Coombs, librarian at the Kentucky Library, Western Kentucky University. Several documents from this collection have been scanned are available for viewing by clicking on the "Additional Files" below.

Selby, Cornelia Frances, 1916-2005 (Sc 2530), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2530. Letters from Cornelia Frances “Fran” Selby to her sister, Mary Agnes Selby in Utica, Ohio, written during Cornelia’s service in the Women’s Army Corps at Camp Campbell, Kentucky. She writes of her activities, her anticipated furlough and their male acquaintances.

Perguson, Dee Carl, Jr., 1921-2010 (Mss 8), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 8. Correspondence and diaries of Deel Carl Perguson, Jr., Horse Branch (Ohio County), Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington. Of interest are his letters written while serving in World War II in the United States, North Africa, and Italy, and his later memoirs of this period. Also of interest are diaries of his years as a student at Western Kentucky State Teachers College, 1939-1943. The collection also includes his recollections of growing up in Horse Branch in the 1920s and 1930s.

Hoffman, Mary Elizabeth - Relating To (Sc 667), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 667. Anonymous, undated essay entitled “Incidents in the Life of Mrs. M. E. Hoffman of Cynthiana, Ky.” describing the Civil War activities of Mrs. Hoffman, a Confederate sympathizer. Includes a 1970s letter to Nancy Disher Baird giving additional information on Mrs. Hoffman’s actions during the Civil War.

Spiller, Mary Jane (Singletary), 1841-1939 (Sc 2448), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan for Manuscripts Small Collection 2448. Typescripted memoir by Mary Jane Singletary of her Civil War experiences in Louisiana. She provides data about her family's military service, their efforts to evade Union blockades of Baton Rouge, and of protecting their possessions from Union troops. Also includes a reminiscence of Elise Talmage Lieb which mentions Spiller and a photograph of Spiller.

World War Ii, 1939-1945 - Letters (Mss 330), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 330. Letters written to parents, friends, faculty and staff of Western Kentucky University by students during their service in Word War II. Includes some press releases, newspaper articles and photos. Also includes a history and travel log of the USS Stevens.

Warren County, Kentucky - World War Ii Servicemen (Mss 326), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 326. Data and newspaper clippings on U.S. military personnel from Warren County, collected during their service in World War II. The seventy pages of names includes women and African Americans.

Cisney, Barbara (Sc 2252), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2252. "Bevie W. Cain," and "Civil War Letters of Bevie Cain," two papers written by Barbara Cisney for Western Kentucky University history classes and based primarily on a collection of Cain's letters held in WKU's Special Collections Library (SC 2251).

Cain, Bevie Waughn, 1844-1883 (Sc 2251), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescripts (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2251. Letters (31) from Cain to James M. Davis, written mostly during the Civil War from her home and school in Breckinridge County, Kentucky, and from Illinois. A strong Confederate sympathizer, Cain responds to Davis’s support of the Union, criticizes President Abraham Lincoln, and opines freely on love, courtship and marriage. She also writes of mutual friends, family, and social and religious activities. Includes 3 additional letters to Davis from his father, sister, and a friend who writes of an opportunity to manage a store. Also includes …

Schiess, Nancy (Sc 2062), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2062. Paper: "Influences On and Decision Factors of Women Entering World War II from Western Kentucky State Teachers College" written by Nancy Schiess for a Kentucky history course at Western Kentucky University.