Full Description
This volume explores how art and artifacts can tell women's stories of war—a critical way into these stories, often hidden due to the second-tier status of reporting women's accomplishments. This unique lens reveals personal, cultural, and historically noteworthy experiences often not found in records, manuscripts, and texts.
Nine stories from history are examined, from the mythical Amazons of Ancient Greece to a female prisoner of war during World War II. Each of the social, political, and battlefield experiences of Penthesilea, Artemisia, Boudica, the feminine cavaliers, the Dahomey Amazons, suffragists, World War I medical corps, and a World War II prisoner of war are intertwined with a particular work of art or an artifact. These include pottery, iconographic images, public sculpture, stone engraving, clothing, decorative arts, paintings, and pulp art. While each story stands alone, brought together in this volume they represent a cross-sectional reflection on the record of women and war. The chapters cover not only a diverse range of women from around the globe - the African continent, the Hispanic territory of Europe, Carian and Ancient Greece and Rome, Iran, Great Britain-Scotland-ancient Caledonia, Western Europe, and North America—but also a diverse choice of artwork and artifacts, eras, and the nature of the wars being fought.
This book will be of value to those interested in gender across history and its interplay in the field of war.
Contents
1. Storytelling with Ceramics: Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons
2. Artist Iconography: Artemisia I of Persia, Admiral and Queen of the Anatolian Region of Caria
3. Stylized Public Sculpture: Boudica Queen of the British Celtic Iceni Tribe
4. Stone Engraving: Order of the Hatchet: The Feminine Cavaliers of the Torch in Tortosa
5. Uniforms as Artifacts: The Dahomey Warriors of West Africa
6. Decorative Arts Medals as Artifacts: Suffragism: The Women's Civil War1840-1921
7. Portraiture as a Historical Record: Mable Annie St Clair Stobart and the Serbian Women's Sick and Wounded Convoy Corps
8. Painting as Social Commentary: Drs Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson and the Endell Street Hospital
9. Pulp Art: Prisoner of War, Chief Navy Nurse, Marion Olds
