Writings on Women in War

Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw, H-MINERVA
Reply-To:H-MINERVA
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: Writings on Women in War

From: Tracy Wood

It's long out-of-print, but anyone interested in women in war should read Kate Webb's book on her experiences as a North Vietnamese prisoner. Kate was a combat correspondent for United Press International [at that time the world's largest news organization] when she and, I believe, two others, were captured by NVA regulars in Cambodia.

Kate was one of the finest war correspondents to cover Vietnam and her capture and subsequent release--and the way she handled herself--did a great deal to knock down myths about women facing the rigors of ground combat. Long before her capture, Kate routinely went on patrol with American AND South Vietnamese units, something others--including U.S. military officers--rarely experienced.

I'm new to the list but I've followed the discussion on Women in War with interest--and, yes, surprise. I, too, thought that by now a seminal work "about" women in war would be in print. I'd like to hear more about the academic attitudes or other obstacles which have hindered such a project.

By way of introduction, I was a UPI correspondent in Vietnam, 1972-74, and president [73-74] of the Assn. of Foreign Correspondents in Vietnam.

Tracy Wood

Date: Sun, 16 Jun 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw, H-MINERVA
Reply-To:H-MINERVA
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: Re: Writings on Women in War

There has been academic writing on women in war on a theoretical level by philosophers, political scientists, and literature specialists. There have also been monographs on women in particular roles in particular conflicts (like the studies of World War II nurses I cited in my last posting) and there have been biographies and autobiographies such as the one you cite. These are the books I assign in my undergraduate course on women in war. What does not exist now, and probably will not until Battle Cries and Lullabies gets into print, is a survey text.

For me the biggest obstacle in writing the book was fear: first the fear of the hubris in attempting to survey so many centuries of history in a field no one had surveyed before so I had to do it without the usual long list of fellow scholars supporting me and second the fear of being attacked from all sides. Now the manuscript exists and though far from perfect will at least mark out the ground. My hope for it is that it will reveal how large the field is and how great the potential for fruitful research.

The revival of scholarship in women's history over the past quarter century has scarcely touched the history of women in war. Feminist historians find military history unattractive; women as nurturers and peacemakers, even as victims, are more appealing than those who go to war. Feminist historians also tend to write gendered history -- that is, they are more interested in masculine and feminine behavior than they are in what actual men and women do. If women who go to war are not distinguished in any clear way from men in the same circumstances, the subject becomes conceptually uninteresting.

For military historians, the absence of women in battle appears self-evident. John Keegan, among the most highly respected military historians of our time, recently wrote, "Warfare is . . . the one human activity from which women, with the most insignificant exceptions, have always and everywhere stood apart. If warfare is as old as history and as universal as mankind, we must now enter the supremely important limitation that it is an entirely masculine activity." Women who appear in the sources, will be categorized automatically as prostitutes or nurses -- roles that are "insignificant." Harriet Tubman, one of the great guerrilla leaders of the Civil War, was pensioned as a nurse. Even Joan of Arc is better remembered as a transvestite and a martyr than as a pioneer in use of artillery.

Currently, even those who write about women in war believe they have found something of unique historical significance when one woman appears in one war. Thus the flurry of interest in the letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, published by the MINERVA Center in 1994 under the title of An Uncommon Soldier. (This book was turned down by other publishers who were disappointed because Wakeman's letters were "just like those of any other soldier.") I believe this is also a reason for the enormous inflation of the reputation of "Molly Pitcher."

I jumped into this field twenty years ago by way of the American Revolution when I wrote about the women in George Washington's army. Now I have trouble separating my own traumatic experiences during my thirty year academic career at George Washington University from problems the subject matter I study may cause. (i.e. "Maybe it's just me.") This year, my departmental chair, while applauding my completion of Battle Cries and Lullabies wrote in my annual evaluation, "I would suggest that Professor De Pauw's next major research be one that is related to the ongoing concerns of the history profession." Some graduate students have told me that they defied advice from my colleagues when they chose to study with me.

In my role as mentor to scholars not affiliated with academe, and to scholars outside my own discipline of history, and to graduate students outside my own institution, I've collected enough anecdotal evidence to lead me to believe that those choosing to study women in war may indeed face especially difficult obstacles in universities and university publishing. (i.e."It's not just me." ) In my case, I chose this field after I was a tenured full professor with a stack of publications in safer topics (the Constitution and the First Federal Congress). It is my hope that publication of Battlecries and Lullabies will help other scholars who now have to prove the legitimacy of their undertakings to sceptical dissertation committees or colleagues.

Linda Grant De Pauw

Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw, H-MINERVA
Reply-To:H-MINERVA
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENTS: Writings on Women in War; Rape in the Military

From: Dorothy H. Mackey

Hello,

I am new to this discussion, I must complement all of you on the thought provoking issues that have come up! I have many thoughts, that I will share over a course of time. But just as an offering as to some comments made on this string in reference to; Information on women in war; I believe it depends on how you want to define "war". If you are looking only for the traditional sense of a foreign enemy engagement, you maybe hard pressed to find much about women. The fact is that the military brass see a medical Corpsman as a military person/soldier even though they (he) are not permitted to carry weapons. Women nurses are the same but have never been given the same status as their male counterparts. I believe male chaplains were also noted as soldiers and acknowledged as such. War according to Webster is armed conflict, states, nations, factions, 2 a determined struggle for a specific goal..war against illiteracy. 3.A state of antagonism or discord. 4. military techniques and procedures. If I may, I see the term "war" on a more universal level. The Constitution has recognized the concern to "protect and defend against enemies both foreign and "domestic"". After researching many of the US treaties, and doctrine of battle...US women in the military are currently in an undeclared war now. Subjected to many things that are illegal, abusive and if before any war crimes tribunal would surely find many of the US military "males" in the stockade for years. I believe that much is ignored because people will not stand up....the price is too high to pay, it is unfortunate that what they have already lost, is much more valuable then not standing up. Here is something that may help you. In Daucaw(sp) Prison Camp, Germany there was a memorial above the ovens..for two British women who were burned alive. I believe the women were British uniformed nurses, but I am not absolutely sure of the latter fact.

To the High School Teacher; The military is a good place to be, with many opportunities, but .....the dangers are the same if not more perilous in the military. When the military states, "they take care of their own", this is both good and bad. The military is a cold and cruel place for anyone seeking help such as women who are raped or assaulted....

Caveat to the individual about college rape; I am empathetic towards your view that the ratio's are about the same. However, may I ask, when a college student gets raped and goes through the proper medical and evidence gathering modes, and if the campus officials do not do anything....can that student go to an outside police agency? And if that campus fails to do something, to the perpetrator, then is the college liable for failure to protect it's students and faculty? I do not honestly know all these answers, and would gratefully appreciate your response...........................................however

As a former Captain in the Air Force who was also a commander of 300, 400 and 2200 personnel, I can categorically tell you both from professional and personal experience that when women are assaulted or raped in the military, the military powers to be don't care! Example, while stationed in Germany, a Master Sgt.. (senior supervisory tier rank of enlisted) came to me in 1989 and told me that young GI males were purposely targeting newly arriving young female GI's, to get them drunk, so that they could gang rape them. I was appalled but also went to the military prosecutor. The prosecutor was a woman, once I told her the facts, she calmly told me...alcohol is consent. She would not do anything. I suggested that with an undergraduate degree in criminal justice that I could at least write an informative article...to all parties, male and female. I covered the entire gambit, women who wrongly accused boyfriends could be prosecuted for false testimony. Covering the need to gather evidence, and the emotional devastation of the survivor. The article was "blessed" by the attorney, and copies went to all senior base officials, for their support and publication in the base paper. I was in transition to another base. A friend checked on the article, it was never published in the base paper. No one cared about the rapes of US women at the hands of US male GIs. Next, let me share some other facts....a woman was assaulted, groped, grabbed, and subjected to humiliation in front of and privately behind closed doors from 1991 to 1992 by two senior officers. She tried to find help, while keeping her career. The predators were the military complaint system.IG..even after attempting to seek not less then six different avenues of assistance it was obvious that no one would intervene to help her. The toll it took was amazing, weight loss, inability to sleep, etc. and resulted in her marriage splitting up, loss of her home, financial loss, etc. Only she thought she was aware of its effects, until one of her troops came in and stated that if she didn't leave her job "those men would kill you." She knew this fact was true, she resigned her career of 9 years, v. her life. What is most perplexing is that after service this women went to civilian police agencies, local, state and federal and they all said the same thing...sorry you were in the military, we can't help you." The point being military who gladly have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution for all American's including their fellow servicemen, are not afforded the vary same rights of basic protection from the US military or police agencies, local prosecutors. I do not wish to diminish your experience, it is equally important. It is simply the military in all of it's glorious traditions and hype of the need to keep secrets under the auspices of "national security" is nothing more then keeping the secret of a national scandal, the private fact that military women in the service are perceived as the personal property to many military men, especially in the hierarchy. I state this because the story above is my story. I have had to go into civil court to get my basic rights heard. I'd even gone to the Justice Dept., 3 times. Now the same Justice Dept. is providing my predators with free counsel as we move into federal court. There is something that is to be said for all of this....and even faced with a defamation suite from one of my predator against me as a means to intimidate me into silence.....silence is the last thing I will be. I have given lectures to college classes, high school classes, and am just getting started. I encourage you, if on campus to demand to be heard too, no person deserves to be violated.

Joan of Arch...equal, strength and weakness. I have wondered about the creation of man/woman. It is often inferred that women are weaker then men. But, I have wondered, why then was it a rib that created woman. Aren't the ribs the most flexible, durable and sturdy bones of the body? They must be to house all of the major organs....then are women weaker, or just as equally strong but in a variety of equally significant ways? In reading about Joan of Arch I have felt that her quest was not that of her own, but of a higher calling. If she merely wanted to be a feminist, then why would she have dedicated so much for a cause that was not just feminist based. Her calling seemed to a bigger mission, one that commanded loyalty of an all male army, (whom I suspected knew her gender but felt compelled to follower her)? Maybe as a unknown spin off of her courage and unusual spirit feminism has found a woman who inspires others. But, as I recall of her story..Joan while fighting others didn't do it merely for the thrill of victory, she lead the army in opposing oppressive armies. She was a dragon slayer of sorts. And as a closing note Joan of Arch to have sacrifice as significant as ones life, I feel is not as simple as labeling her a feminist. Instead she and Ms. Tubman were universalists, all people are important.

I thank you for allowing me to ramble and look forward to other postings.

Dorothy H. Mackey

Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw, H-MINERVA
Reply-To:H-MINERVA
H-NET List for Discussion of Women & the Military and Women in War
Subject: COMMENT: Writings on Women in War

From: June Cotter

I must agree on the lack of receptivity by the academic community of the topic of women in war. My current project, a book I have mentioned in previous posts, is about women's roles in war, and the changes in our participation over time, with the voices of as many women as I can add about their experiences. It began as my Senior Thesis in the persuit of my BA in history. When I proposed the topic, my department chair (a man) asked if there were any sources or interest in "such an odd topic". He felt the topic of women in war was "too limited" for a 30 page thesis. I ended up cutting it

back from about 45 pages, with lots more to write, which is why I am attempting the book. Women's lack of forward progress in the military has , I feel, been a direct result of the fact that no one knows what women have done, so they don't really know what we are capable of. Yes, we have come forward some, but the same stereotypes, attitudes and restrictions still apply for the most part that were in exixtance in the 70's. Please keep writing Linda! We need all the enlightenment we can get to the abilities and capablities we have, else the few women generals will remain unique, the female Sergeant Majors few, and women soldiers of all ranks will continue to be counted as less than they are.
June Cotter

Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996
From: Reina Pennington

In response to Linda Grant De Pauw's post in the 15-16 Jun 1996 H-MINERVA Digest . . .

So true, so true! This is what I call in a recent article the "historiographical no-man's land." K. Jean Cottam talks about being ostracized by both military and women's historians, and how she felt her work "fell between the cracks" because neither group would support its publication.

Feminist historians
also tend to write gendered history -- that is, they are more interested in masculine and feminine behavior than they are in what actual men and women do.

This approach also disturbs me. You find many interesting articles in women's history and literature about "women in war" -- but they're often much more interested in "representations" of what women were doing than what they were REALLY doing. Of course representations are important when we're talking about the construction of gender -- but in my mind, they can only be fully appreciated in contrast to the actuality of the thing they're supposed to represent.

The story of women in war is still in its infancy; a great deal of basic work remains to be done. Unfortunately, this sort of work is denigrated as "mere gap-filling" or "compensatory history." One of my own pieces was criticized because it did not provide a conceptual framework for the study of women in war. How do we devise such frameworks without a solid foundation of monographs, records and documents? And who's going to publish that sort of material when it's seen as a lesser sort of history, in every category?

How do we tackle these problems of legitimacy, interest and acceptance? I was overjoyed when a panel I organized entitled "Women in Combat: The Slavic Experience" was accepted by the Berkshire Women's History Conference; fewer than a dozen people attended the session (of the 2000 at the conference).

John Keegan, among the most highly respected military historians of our time, recently wrote, "Warfare is . . . an entirely masculine activity."

How do we topple these great icons? At a military history conference last year, I thought I'd finally have the chance to confront Keegan about this statement directly -- I used it to open my presentation on "Offensive Women." But Keegan, the keynote speaker of the conference, left soon after his talk and didn't hear my paper.

What if we all give a dollar to Linda for charitable contributions? Is it worth sending people like Keegan and Martin van Creveld subscriptions to MINERVA? What if we get their addresses and deluge them with copies of our work?

. . . my own traumatic experiences during my thirty year academic career at George Washington University. . . This year, my departmental chair, while applauding my completion of Battle Cries and Lullabies wrote in my annual evaluation, "I would suggest that Professor De Pauw's next major research be one that is related to the ongoing concerns of >the history profession."

It is *really* disheartening to hear this. I was told by one advisor (since dropped from my committee) that my work on military women was "faddish" and that "there is no historical problem here" -- that is, no significance. All of us who work in this area will continue to endure this situation until we can somehow make the role of women in war accepted as part of "mainstream" history.

It is my hope that publication
of Battlecries and Lullabies will help other scholars who now have to prove the legitimacy of their undertakings to sceptical dissertation committees or colleagues.

I hope so too, and fervently wish for its quick publication. What ELSE can we do to improve the visibility and acceptance of this field of study???

Reina Pennington
University of South Carolina

Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996
From: Linda Grant De Pauw

I was recruited as a commentator for a panel on Women in the Military at the Berks in 1981. The presenters were all sociologists -- I was the token history presence. The organizers had a devil of a time getting it approved and then a Freudian slip kept it off the printed program. The time slot was Sunday morning. As I recall, about 6 people showed up. To add to the drama, one of the paper presenters decided not to show up, and having used my personal political capital to get this session approved, I was damned if I was going to see it crash and burn. I spent Saturday night writing something to fill the gap. It was titled "Needs and Opportunities in Women's Military History." If I hadn't been terrified, I would never have had the nerve to write it. It was my first step toward writing Battlecries and Lullabies.

The MINERVA Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational foundation dedicated to supporting the study of women and the military and women in war. It is entirely supported by sales of books and periodicals and donations from friends. As all of you know, the list is produced for free. The suggestion that everyone send me a dollar wouldn't help much -- we have only about 225 people on H-MINERVA. If everyuone got their library to subscribe, that would make a difference. Over the years a few people have sent gift subscriptions to those they thought needed them. As I recall, one went to the White House, which was probably not very useful. Another went to the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy. For several years, the donor renewed the subscription and eventually Nimitz picked it up.

. What ELSE can we do to improve the visibility and acceptance of this field of study???

Since founding MINERVA, I've been doing all the work except maintaining the mailing list and a few related clerical tasks that are delegated to MOUSE -- Morgenstern's Own Unique Services Enterprise, the (very) small business run by my former student Debra E. Morgenstern. Some of MINERVA's chores I do competently; some (e.g. proofreading) I do very badly. But I work for free and the price is right. Perhaps my very weakest area is promotion and marketing. I have trouble separating myself from MINERVA and it seems too much like blowing my own horn. From time to time friends of MINERVA have made attempts to apply for grants or to generate some publicity. So far these have not been notably successful, but there are always new hands picking up the torch. Currently I have one former student and one World War II vintage scholar engaged in marketing and fundraising efforts. Anyone who would like to get involved can contact me or Deb Morgenstern (MouseMiner@aol.com). The people most active at present are, unfortunately, not on email.

Here's one idea: a MINERVA web page is in the works, yes? Why don't we make available (for browsing and downloading) not only focused bibliographies, but also a list of works in progress? That list could first be posted here and on other relevant lists (H-WAR, H-WOMEN). I'll volunteer to collect and format the information, unless Linda already has something like this ready to go. I'll also volunteer to provide bibliographies on Soviet military women and on women in military aviation (worldwide). What do you think, Linda?

The H-MINERVA Web Page is at http://h-net.msu.edu/~minerva Everyone is welcome to help build it. One nice thing about a web page is that it can contain documents far too long for posting to the list. For instance, I've posted the tables of contents of all the back issues of MINERVA: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military, and Minerva's Bulletin Board going back to 1983. Reina's suggestions sound like just what we need for a FAQ section. Anyone who has something that might be good for our web page can send the file to me. The H-NET staff constructed our page and cheerfully adds what I send. I would like our page to have more links to other web sites than presently appear. There's not an awful lot out there about military women or women veterans It works the other way too -- the more sites that link to H-MINERVA, and the more frequently H-MINERVA is mentioned on other lists or newsgroups, the more visible we will become. If you visit a site that might want to link with us, send them email and suggest it.

Linda Grant De Pauw

From: Reina Pennington
Date: 96-06-22
In response to Linda Grant De Pauw's post in the 15-16 Jun 1996 H-MINERVA Digest . . .

Feminist historians also tend to write gendered history -- that is, they are more interested in masculine and feminine behavior than they are in what actual men and women do.

John Keegan, among the most highly respected military historians of our time, recently wrote, "Warfare is . . . an entirely masculine activity."

It is my hope that publication
of Battlecries and Lullabies will help other scholars who now have to prove the legitimacy of their undertakings to sceptical dissertation committees or colleagues.

I hope so too, and fervently wish for its quick publication. What ELSE can we do to improve the visibility and acceptance of this field of study???

Reina Pennington
University of South Carolina

Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996
From: Angie Dorman

We've had a lot of discussions in real life and real time on this subject and at the risk of being flamed and/or dismissed on things, I'll stick my neck out and add some to the discussion on this list.

I think you would be better off putting copies of minerva in public libraries and hs libs. Trying to persuade the Keegans of the world is an uphill battle, but spreading the seeds to the next generation will flourish (just look at us;). At the same time, publications like Minerva (thankyou Linda) is the foundation of the building of a new way of looking at and valuing history.

Of course, you know that I think we should be doing this in all areas, not just women's hist. I see a broader societal rot due to this whole post-war uniformity movement. McCarthyism is associated with the 50's, but the arrogant attitude (we are right, you are wrong) lives on without a catchy name and more or less unrecognized by the practiciners of slightly flavored mediocrity.

DR.B was a jerk (the referred to advisor). He was always a jerk from the minute I met him, a few years before youe did. He prides himself in his attitudes -- a slightly more educated Rush Limbaugh. It's notable that he went through grad school in the 50s and I remember his pride in alignment with the Right during that era. He reflects it in his every action -- and is a good example of a more or less mediocre scholar who is desperately trying to create others in his own image.

He did not succeed with me, nor your, and I know of others who stood up to him. I would say we all paid a price (myself not very much of one and by design), but our choice is to become him or create a new way of doing things without worry about his opinion or other's like him. You know, opinions are like a@@holes -- everybody's got one and some people are complete walking a@@shole from head to toe. Learning to recognize and avoid them is the key.

There's another fold to this thing and that is recognition/envy factor that the Dr. Bs and the bland so easily fall into -- but I'll shut up and put on my flack vest.

--Angie Dorman

Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996
From: Ilene Feinman

It must be obvious that I have been checked out for a bit. I am perusing my collected mail and have several responses to make. I want to thank LInda for providing us with the story of her owrk and the politics of her board review. It is a most interesting battle. I wish that Lorry Fenner was listening and repsonding right now... I think she is in transit and not receiving the list. I think that her dissertation, finished FAll of 1995 has alot to say about this discussion in that she pieces together a history of public representations of the debates since WW II about women in the Forces titled: Ideology and Amnesia. IN this work she points out that the debates have been repeatedly staged and that they work -- and here is the point that we must emphasize in understanding the reasons that this field is so undervalued -- theses debates consistently work to contain women's proper roles and to avoid real questions about citizenship and civic participation and responsibility.

A second point, I am finding that the interest, academically speaking in this filed is growing. Publishers are trolling networks like this to find projects on women in the military that look interesting to pursue. Many more conferences are carrying sections about gender and war, and looking for historical as well as political pieces. However, since I am not a historian as such but an interdisciplinary something-or-other which is called American Studies and cobbles together both historical and political science approaches to topics, namely women and the U.S. military in my case, I have a particular investment in wide ranging discussions laying the groundwork on women in the military and feel that each of these approaches are important singly and combined to discover why it is so difficult to get the story of women and the military out... hence my first reference to Fenner's work.

Ilene Feinman

Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996
From: Val Eads

I think I've had a bit to say on this subject before so if I'm repeating myself bear with me. This thread touches several points close to home; I'll try not to ramble too much.

-First off, I'm a medievalist, presently writing a dissertation on the Investiture Controversy, a war fought in the 11th century. Once upon a time, when popes and kings were seen as the only folks worth the effort to study, this was a hot topic. The first great war between church and state, the beginning of the separation thereof, the beginning of the end of the gothic gloom known as the Middle Ages, etc. My interest in this topic is that the war was largely fought and won by a woman, the countess Matilda of Tuscany. I am approaching the topic as military history, ie, I want to know how she did it. So I think I'm in a good position to comment on the historigraphy of women and war, at least up to about 500 yrs ago.

-The entire field of military history suffers from the Rodney Dangerfield syndrome. I really wish I had saved a recent post from Kelly DeVries on mediev-l about his adventures writing mil hist. This is a male writing good solid tech stuff. Bernard Bachrach also posts a lot on this theme. Historians, and I gather this is not limited to historians of the Middle Ages, consider mil hist the academic equivalent of dungeons and dragons. Add the weirdness of gender and only the truly committed [or ought to be] will pursue the topic. We are in a weird-ass field of study and this affects how the rest of the world views us.

-Women are people too. If military historians are not the golden children of academe no ambitious young scholar will go into that field and risk her chances of future employment. You get people who had a previously existing condition. I went to grad school to study this subject; most go to get a job as profs and select a topic with that objective in mind. A few of them no doubt tell themselves that they will get more daring once they are secure in their positions. The sad thing is that most of them probably don't realize that they are being lied to. I never seriously considered an academic career until I lucked into a temporary full time teaching gig [long since ended] and found out that I actually did it pretty well and enjoyed it somewhat more than the other jobs I've held. By then it was too late to pretend to be interested in nuns or peasants or children or whatever.

Then, of course, there is the minor detail of finding an advisor. I did. It was sheer dumb luck. None of the women in our system were into military actions. He, of course, was not into women's hist but knew the drill. Read the sources, in Latin; read the secondary lit, in German; put it on the maps. Do you still have a topic? [Yes!] Then let's get started. I assume that if I had wanted to work on the iconography of nostril hairs in medieval art the procedure would have been the same, and if I had turned up a good number of pictorial representations of hairy nostrils the diss would be under way.

-Perceived militarism is a bit of a problem, but those of us old enough to remember first hand the anti-war roots of the current wave of feminism are now beginning to retire [and I'm just entering the job market at the same age]. After nearly 30 years, there is still no substantial number of young women who have sufficiently overcome their gender role conditioning to show an interest in this particular human accomplishment. They also still can't change a tire. What do you expect? How many of you play D&D or Crusader with your daughters? People who will subpartition a footnote into four levels will profess to be unable to get the difference between studying war and making war. The feminist scholars who are turned off by milhist do not behave that way because they are feminist scholars but because they are women raised in a society that decrees such behavior for women. Those of us who are in this weird pigeonhole got here by various routes; those other women took different turns along the road. I cannot understand a woman who refuses to learn basic self-defense because that would be buying into male violence. I don't expect her to understand why I want to study Matilda of Tuscany rather than Hildegard of Bingen.

What both of us should expect, and demand, is professional courtesy where we acknowledge that as professionals we have the right to our own areas of interest and that it is possible to discuss work in a field that is not our own in a professional, ie, informed and objective, manner. [Yes, I know perfectly well that there are many who say that objectivity is nonexistent. "Assume a virtue if you have it not." It is much nastier to take someone apart in a subtle and civilized manner while maintaining objectivity. Just calling him a jerk, no matter how long a word you use to do it, is simply not as much fun or anywhere near as damaging.]

-A lesson recently learned: We have to live with the uncomprehending. They will be our advisors, readers, [COs], hiring and tenure committees, grant readers, publishers, and-Minerva sustain us!-students. I had my grant apps go down in flames, to use a euphemism, last year. As an example, the five NEH readers rated me at 2 on a scale of one-to-five. They were consistent across the board. They hated it. OK, I asked for some advice. What became quit obvious was that I had not made clear to these people what I was doing or, more to the point, what I had done. I asked for some advice on how to do better in the future and what came back included, "Although you are writing about a woman you haven't used any feminist scholarship." When I finished screaming and bouncing off the walls I rectified the situation. These people don't all know what I know; they only know what's on the page before them. And there was nothing there they could relate to. I had expected them to understand too much-such as that feminist scholarship has yet to reach the point I started from-as self-evident. I had to give them something to work with.

Here is where Reina's remark on the study of representations of women and war comes in. I listed a number of articles on that very topic that could have been furthered by some considerations of the military milieu that the women operated in. The writers had at least considered a basis in reality for the representations they were discussing. The papers, by the way, were worth the reading. I resubmitted the proposal with changes that included fitting the topic into the framework of existing feminist scholarship; I got my grant.

-Finally, at least for medievalists, changes have been going on within the milhist field. The previous emphasis on great battles/leaders/anticipators of modern practices neglected those fields most likely to include women, ie, logistics and defensive siegecraft. This has changed. Have a look at Jim Bradbury's The Medieval Siege. There are mentions of women throughout, gleaned from somewhere over 200 medieval documents. Yet this book will not appear on any list of women's history. It should.

For every Keegan there is a Bradbury.

Val Eads

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