Semiotic Readings of the USS Midway Museum

Abstract

This article was inspired by a visit to the USS Midway aircraft carrier during the 2012 ISA Convention. Through a semiotic reading of the museum's exhibit and honoring ceremony of veterans, the article argues that while women have been increasingly included in certain combat positions within the US military, institutions that convey messages of military service continue to leave women out of the picture. This thereby renders gender-inclusive practices in war invisible to the average citizen. Through the erasure of women's performance in the armed services, war museums and memorials help ensure that war remains a male preserve in the public imagination. More broadly, the article argues that semiotics as a methodology should be given more attention by feminist scholarship that seeks to challenge mainstream conceptualizations and measurements of militarization. Doing so should provide more sophisticated and nuanced understandings of how militarism becomes embedded in societal level institutions – as previously advanced by feminist scholars.