Register
Register here for the annual meeting and to begin or renew an ASA membership
Register here to submit a proposal through the ASA's 2012 submission site.
Register here for JHU Press and ASA membership services, including online access to American Quarterly and the Encyclopedia of American Studies Online.Register here to join an ASA community. Only current ASA members may contribute to the community blogs. Registration is not required to submit display or text ads or news and events or to view many pages. We will refuse posts that are not of professional interest to ASA members.
Click here for membership FAQ's
Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
For submission guidelines, click here
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
By University | By Year
Heikkila, Kimberly L. "G.I. Gender: Vietnam War-Era Women Veterans and U.S. Citizenship," University of Minnesota, May 2002.
More than 250,000 women joined the U.S. military during the Vietnam War era. Between 7,500 and 11,000 of them served in Vietnam. They served as nurses and as enlisted women and line officers in capacities such as clerk-typist, photojournalist, communications specialist, and intelligence officer. Many of these women wanted to share the burden of wartime military service with their male counterparts, but they also wanted to achieve the economic independence and secure standing as Americans that the military promised its recruits. In short, they sought both material and symbolic benefits of U.S. citizenship. Nearly thirty years after the war’s end, however, many women Vietnam veterans are still struggling to secure these benefits. This dissertation explains the process whereby women Vietnam veterans have been rendered invisible martial citizens. It argues that U.S. martial citizenship-enacted through wartime military policy and practice, cultural memory of the war, and the postwar distribution of veteran’s benefits-made sex an important criterion for soldier/veteran citizens, and put the benefits of full citizenship just beyond the grasp of women. Feminist scholarship that shows that gender and citizenship are processes that create, rather than reflect, difference informs the analysis of twenty oral history interviews with Vietnam War-era women veterans. These women’s stories show that the institutional and social practices of martial citizenship produced conflicting gender calls for women at-and after war. Caught between being members of the U.S. military and representatives of femininity, military women embodied the contradictions in the military’s gender project. While such conflicts paralyzed some women, they spurred others to action as they mobilized to claim the full benefits of U.S. martial citizenship.
Quick Links
American Quarterly [official journal site]
American Quarterly [editorial site]
Encyclopedia of American Studies
Encyclopedia of American Studies [editorial site]