Women's “Positive Patriotic Duty” to Participate: The Practice of Female Citizenship in Oregon and the Expanding Surveillance State during the First World War and its Aftermath

Abstract

Kimberly Jensen explores the practice of visible female citizenship in America during and after the First World War. During that time, thousands of women in Oregon participated in “visible civic pageantry” associated with national Liberty Loan drives and “an emerging surveillance state that included new strategies for scrutiny.” Jensen documents local and national forces “on women to conform to wartime norms,” and highlights ways in which women resisted wartime surveillance that challenged their civil liberties.