Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War by Kimberly Jensen

Abstract

faceless citizens nor the predestined story of unrestrained progress. By combining thebest recent scholarshipwith witty literaryexcerpts, he balances analytical rigorwith details that enlivenhis story. This isnot to say that Abbott's achievement isnotwithout faults ? or oppor tunitiesforothers toexploit.The bibliographic essay at the end iswonderful, but inadequate notes deny readers the chance to findwhere he collected his anecdotes. Mexican cities are conspicuously absent exceptwhen paired with theirAmerican cognates. To includeMexico would have changed Abbott's book, yet not entirely,given his emphasis on transcontinen tal and global contexts. Likewise, coverage of Canadian citieswaxes and wanes depending on the frameof analysis, and smaller cities like Lethbridge and Regina are invisible here. A trulycomparative history ofNorth American cities stillawaits an author. These shortcomings do not detract from what isa significantcontribution to thehistory of theNorth American West. Abbott has given us more than just another road to follow.He has drawn a new historical atlas forthe region. Many will debate itsmerits or question the routes he took, but all will profit immensely from reading his map before setting out on their own travels. Matthew Klingle Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine MOBILIZINGMINERVA: AMERICAN WOMEN IN THE FIRST WORLDWAR byKimberlyJensen University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2008. Illustrations, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. 264 pages. $65.00 cloth. $30.00 paper. InMobilizing Minerva, Kimberly Jensen explores the activities of three groups of American women ? physicians, nurses, and "women-at-arms" ? who embraced military service duringWorld War I as a route to per sonal, professional, and political advancement. While women's historians have explored suf fragists'reactions toAmerican involvement in thewar, frompacifist organizing to expedient support, Jensen's focus on women in and around the military reveals the contradictions of women's wartime service in new ways. Like suffrageleaders, these threegroups ofwomen "saw the wartime state as a responsive institu tion that they could reshape for thebetter by undertaking the obligations of citizenship," but they also sought to change themilitary and challenge state-sponsored violence against women (p. 165).Drawing on careful research in government archives, manuscript collections, popular periodicals, and suffrage publications, Jensenargues thather subjects soughtnot only professional advancement but also personal protection and safetyforwomen; theyplaced freedom from violence at the center of their campaign for women's rights. Experiences at home and abroad shaped women's military activism. Violence at the hands ofunruly crowds at the 1913 Washington, D.C., suffrageparade, and the failure of state actors to prevent it,revealed the boundaries of the nation's gendered "Protector-Protected" script; women who made public demands forfeited male protection and opened them selves to violence. According to Jensen, such experiences convinced suffragiststo demand protection from violence as a fundamental right of citizenship. Reports of the "rape of Belgium" and the victimization of women in theEuropean war furtherbelied themyth women could rely on male protection. Nurses, physicians, and "women-at-arms" responded by critiquing violence against women and by challenging themyth ofmale protection. Most surprising is Jensen'sfinding that in the face of a highly masculine discourse of military service in the early twentiethcentury, thousands of women joined paramilitary organizations during the war. By doing so, they asserted their right todefend thenation, even 300 OHQ vol. no, no. 2 adoptingmilitary trappings such as uniforms, and to defend themselves against violence. Despite some support from gun manufactur ers, such blatant adoption ofmasculine privi legeprovoked backlash, revealed especially in thepress' unflatteringand sexualized coverage of Russia's all-female Battalion of Death. Mean while, woman physicians offeredtheirservices to the military and demanded officerstatus in return.Though they failed to secure official rank, many traveledtoEurope toprovidemedi cal services to civilians, particularly women and children victimized bywartime violence. Jensen calls theirwork, which survived well into thepost-WorldWar II era, "an important part of the history of women's antiviolence activism" (p. 115). Nurses also sought officer status, not only as a means for professional advancement but also to protect themselves in a "hostile, sexu alized workplace environment" (p. 117).Their campaign reveals a shiftin theprofession and inwomen's politics; before thewar, nursing leaders insisted that nurses' professionalism and middle-class respectabilitywould shield themfrom danger, but inpetitions, letters, and organizing campaigns, nurses described con sistent "humiliations and indignities," mostly from the male...