Abstract
"Vanished Veterans" traces the public representation of concealed female Civil War soldiers during the formative decades of their historical memory, from the beginning of the war to the late 1930s. Using a wide variety of sources, including archival material, fiction, plays, monuments, diaries, political campaigns, and newspapers, this project reveals how female soldiers became forgotten historical figures, and the purpose their public imagery and erasure from the war's public memory served for contemporary society.From the moment the first Civil War female soldier was publicly reported to their last substantial public representation, their public imagery was influenced by contextual events that upended prevailing gender ideologies. This includes the war itself, Reconstruction, the women's rights movement, and the evolution of modern womanhood. These events caused female soldiers to be romanticized, villainized, and, eventually, suppressed in contemporary media. "Vanished Veterans," thus, provides historians with a new and valuable vantage point from which to observe how the late nineteenth-to-mid-twentieth-century United States confronted and attempted to manage some of the most societally transformative events in its history.
Public portrayals of female soldiers either reinforced traditional white gender conventions or denigrated women who traversed the boundaries of their culturally assigned gender. In doing so, they served to uphold a white patriarchal social system during a period hallmarked by radical changes to the racial and gendered structure of society. The increased absence of female soldiers from the public domain also contributed to safeguarding white patriarchy by removing exemplars of female militancy and rebelliousness.
Thesis is embargoed until 31 July 2030.
| Date of Award | Jul 2025 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
|
| Sponsors | Department of Education Northern Ireland |
| Supervisor | Nik Ribianszky (Supervisor) & Keira Williams (Supervisor) |
Keywords
- American Civil War
- popular culture
- fiction
- memory
- gender history
- military history
- public history
- commemoration
- female soldiers
- women's history
- gender identity
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