American Soldiers Research Articles

Geocorpographies of Commemoration, Repression and Resistance

The contributions in this special issue expose the connections between somatechnics and geocorpographies: the ongoing permutations of geopolitical and geographical influences on conceptions of personhood and bodies, whether on the level of the individual, the community, the nation-state and/or the transnational. This issue aims to link the geocorpographies of violence and resistance to the somatechnics processes through which bodies become calibrated as social subjects. In his essay ‘Geocorpographies of Torture’, Joseph Pugliese coined the term geocorpographies to express ‘that the body, in any of its manifestations, is always geopolitically situated and graphically inscribed by signs, discourses, regimes of visuality and so on. Its geopolitical markings can only be abstracted to the process of symbolic and political violence’ (2007: 12). Through his rigorous approach in examining the intimate borders of the body within racialised zones of war and terror, Pugliese demonstrates that within particular spaces ‘bodies become coextensive with space as such: they are the ground upon which military operations of occupation are performed through which control of the colonized country is secured’ (2007: 12). Drawing on examples of the acts of torture by American soldiers inflicted upon inmates of the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Iraq, Pugliese stages a critical examination of how ‘conquered Arab men’ (2007: 5) become coextensive with the spaces of the prison complex, as well as the

Edward A. Gutiérrez.Doughboys on the Great War: How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Service.

Edward A. Gutiérrez.<i>Doughboys on the Great War: How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Service</i>.

Instant mobility, stratified prostitution market: The politics of belonging of Korean women selling sex in the U.S.

Korean women who sell sex in the United States are the regular subjects of South Korean news reports. Sarcastically named “tour girls,” these women are thrown back to the misogynistic position still occupied by the “western princesses” (prostitutes for American soldiers) of Korea's military camp towns. According to general feminist analysis, both the “western princess” and the “tour girl” emerge from institutionalized prostitution. However, this study argues that the motivations and desires of the Korean women who sell sex in the U.S. these days are very different from those of the women in the old days. Hence, this paper will compare the experiences of old women belonging to military camp towns with those of young women selling sex in Korea's stratified prostitution market, using the analytic frame of ‘belonging.’ This will reveal the so–called “tour girl” who was not created overseas but developed as a matter of course within this market that serves Korean male desire. This study will analyze the form of subjectivity and politics of belonging of these newly emerging women along with the changes in the Korean sex industry.

Lusitania: le grand roman d’un mystérieux naufrage par Claude Mossé

Reviews 271 Le roman abonde en références à la littérature et à la culture cubaines. Le métis porte en lui le double héritage de l’Afrique et celui des indigènes Taïno des Îles.Ce personnage, absent du texte du roman, l’est aussi à lui-même, privé par l’histoire de ses deux héritages. Independent scholar Suzanne Gasster-Carrierre Mossé, Claude. Lusitania: le grand roman d’un mystérieux naufrage. Paris: Fayard, 2015. ISBN 978-2-213-68627-1. Pp. 368. 19 a. Mossé skillfully combines facts with hypotheses in this retelling of the sinking of the Lusitania, the British cruise liner that met a disastrous end not far from its intended destination of Cobh, Ireland, on 7 May 1915. By using the death of the 128 American passengers on board the luxury ship as his point of departure, Mossé demonstrates the motivations of the key figures in the drama: Sir Asquith, British Prime Minister; Winston Churchill, First Lord of the British Admiralty; Lord Inverclyde, head of the Cunard Ship Company of which the Lusitania was the star cruiser; Woodrow Wilson, American President; and Kaiser Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany. Sir Asquith’s weak leadership skills make him reliant on Churchill once war has been declared in Europe. With Great Britain’s reputation for strength on the seas rather than in the trenches, Asquith urges Churchill to involve the Royal Navy in the conflict. Churchill, however, refuses to react precipitously to this request. Instead, he displays his calculating side as he contemplates how American soldiers can be drawn into the war to fight with the Allies against the German ground forces even though President Wilson has insisted on American neutrality in the face of “une guerre qui ne les concerne pas” (104). Churchill, or“Le Bouledogue”as his associates refer to him because of his perseverance when confronted with obstacles (120), designs his own plan of action, according to author Mossé. Through strategic contacts in Great Britain and abroad, Churchill pursues the suggestion made by a friend, namely that the Americans be tricked into joining the war on the Allies’side, in his words,“par la ruse!”(136). Because the author can neither completely validate nor refute his plausible hypotheses regarding the British naval officer’s self-serving duplicity, suspense in the novel builds as the events pitting the Lusitania against German U-boats reach a climax. The reader, keen to know the outcome of Mossé’s research and the conditions leading to the luxury liner’s demise, is carried away by the swiftly-moving plot. References to Kaiser Wilhelm’s desire to engage in a correctly fought war, meaning one in which civilian lives are not lost gratuitously, ennoble the military events portrayed. Similarly, the novel describes the horror felt by the German U-boat officers over the unexpected, rapid sinking of the Lusitania, although they had fired a small torpedo intended to cause only minimal damage to the liner’s prow, as instructed. Questions about what really happened persist, even today. The characters’ nationalities and political differences notwithstanding, their shared sorrow over the tragic loss of so many innocent lives at sea serves to unite them. University of Texas, El Paso Jane E. Evans N’Dongo, M. Mahmoud. Kraft: fictions et épisodes. Paris: Gallimard, 2015. ISBN 9782 -07-014904-9. Pp. 144. 15 a. Sans faire entorse à la créativité et au réalisme fictionnel dont il embaume son lecteur, ce livre est un recueil unique de nouvelles. Fictions et épisodes s’y composent et se définissent au pluriel. Deux nouvelles courtes juxtaposées mais sans rapport de fond nous amènent d’abord au bout du voyage d’un vieillard déprimé vers un suicide avorté par la grâce de sosies de Marilyn et d’un parfum chargé de mémoire, le N° 5 de Chanel. Puis à travers la figure légendaire du trompettiste Moses Malone, la seconde nouvelle plonge les lecteurs dans l’Amérique des années soixante où la condition du Noir—ou du “trop Noir”—dans le monde du Jazz ressuscite l’injuste destin qui fut celui des talents afro-américains victimes de leur...

Hell Before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany, April 1945 by John C. McManus

Hell Before Their Very Eyes: American Soldiers Liberate Concentration Camps in Germany, April 1945 by John C. McManus

Through Indian Sign Language: The Fort Sill Ledgers of Hugh Lennox Scott and Iseeo, 1889–1897 ed. by William C. Meadows

Through Indian Sign Language: The Fort Sill Ledgers of Hugh Lennox Scott and Iseeo, 1889-1897, ed. William C. Meadows (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015, 520 pp., hardbound, $55, ISBN: 978-080614-727-7)HUGH LENOX SCOTT (1853-1934) was a high-ranking officer in the U.S. Army. He is well known among students of Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL) as the organizer of the very first conference both in and on this sign language in Browning, Montana, in 1930; as the author of a couple of articles on PISL; and for his attempt to make a filmed dictionary of the language in the 1930s. From 1891 to 1897 he was the commander of Troop L, 7th Cavalry, which consisted exclusively of Native American soldiers. Iseeo (1849-1927) was a lifelong member of this troop and a good friend of Scott's. Iseeo did not speak English when Scott arrived at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, and Scott did not speak Kiowa, but Scott had learned a northern variety of PISL from Native Americans farther north before he arrived in Oklahoma. Scott and Iseeo communicated throughout their lives exclusively in PISL (and dictated letters when they were separated). Scott had a keen interest in Plains Indians, and he interviewed Iseeo, a knowledgeable keeper of Kiowa traditions, many times, and other members of this army unit, as well as other visitors. The stories were all told to Scott in sign language, and Scott wrote them down in English. This eventually led to three notebooks, totaling almost five hundred handwritten pages.The main body of the book consists of a diplomatic edition of the sign language stories translated into English by Scott (pp. 157-453). The texts have been carefully edited by William C. Meadows, anthropologist and an expert in Kiowa culture and history. Meadows also wrote an excellent introduction (pp. 3-155) about Scott, Iseeo, and all of the other Native consultants in Troop L, as well as those who contributed texts.The trickster stories, origin myths, fables, migration stories, and texts about lake monsters, belief systems, medicine, sexual miracles, military achievements, and battles, as well as manuals such as the one on how to catch a bald eagle with your bare hands, are fascinating. One often notices similarities between these Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho, and Caddoan myths and those from other Native American groups. I believe the chapters on the stories could have profited from more extensive cross-referencing, as some of the stories recur in different versions. In addition, more comparative comments would have been welcome, along the lines of Scott himself, who made marginal notes on parallels in Blackfoot narrative traditions, for example. But that is my only criticism with regard to this fascinating book.What this book can teach us about sign languages in general and about Plains Indian Sign Language in particular is of more interest to readers of SLS.The lexicon of PISL is fairly well documented, with at least a dozen published dictionaries (see Davis [2010], who counted more than thirteen thousand identified tokens of some thirty-five hundred distinct signs). Surprisingly, however, PISL grammar is poorly documented. Only a handful of texts have been published or are otherwise accessible through film recordings, sequences of photographs, or transcripts of signs, and there is no grammatical sketch of more than a few pages in length. As the language is severely endangered, we can be thankful that Jeffrey Davis has been documenting the language for more than a decade, even if his published work thus far is more sociolinguistic and historical than grammatical.The current book is therefore a welcome addition to the scarce materials on PISL, and this time directly from a Native viewpoint. Information about the language can be found in five types of sources in the book. Meadows provides a very good historical overview of PISL research, with new facts and observations, in his introduction, adding to the existing scholarship on PISL. …

Soldiers, Readers, and the Reception of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables in Civil War America

ABSTRACT: This article examines the literary reception of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables in Civil War America and the literary and cultural factors contributing to its remarkable popularity. After its 1862 publication in France, Les Misérables was quickly translated into English and appeared in two American editions. While previous scholarship has noted the novel's status as a bestseller of the war, this article is the first to draw on an archive of handwritten and printed sources, including fictional and nonfictional texts, to examine the reasons Hugo's novel resonated so strongly with Civil War American readers. This article argues that soldiers used references to the novel in their autobiographical writing to create a lens through which to view and comment on their wartime experiences, while novelists such as John Esten Cooke drew on Hugo's message of struggle for freedom in their own cause. Additional reasons for the novel's warm reception among American soldiers lie in its themes of fighting and suffering, potential for empathetic identification with characters and scenes, and widespread availability at a time of considerable disruptions to the literary marketplace.

« Ambassadors of democracy » : les soldats de l’armée d’occupation des États-Unis en Allemagne (1945-1949)

In the spring of 1945, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and France assumed supreme authority in Germany. The American occupation policy provided for an affirmative program of reorientation … designed completely to eliminate Nazi and militaristic doctrines and to encourage the development of democratic ideas. The American soldiers, as ambassadors of and America's best salesmen, became key actors in the reorientation process. Army materials emphasized that soldiers were given a fulfilling mission which consisted in making victory stick. The troop information program encouraged servicemen to promote democracy in their informal contacts with Germans. Soldiers and their dependents had to display a friendly face of hard power and exert soft power influence. In 1946, the Army devised a comprehensive program for German youth—the Army Assistance to German Youth Activities (GYA)—designed to reduce juvenile delinquency and demonstrate democratic concepts. Sports activities were regarded as an effective tool to reach German children's thinking and teach democratic values of fair play and teamwork. In the midst of Cold War tensions, sports activities were also utilized to expose Germans to American culture and traditions.

Doughboys on the Great War: How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Experience

It is impossible to reproduce the state of mind of the men who waged war in 1917 and 1918, Edward Coffman wrote in The War to End All Wars. In Doughboys on the Great War the voices of thousands of servicemen say otherwise. The majority of soldiers from the American Expeditionary Forces returned from Europe in 1919. Where many were simply asked for basic data, veterans from four states--Utah, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Virginia--were given questionnaires soliciting additional information and remarks. Drawing on these questionnaires, completed while memories were still fresh, this book presents a chorus of soldiers' voices speaking directly of the expectations, motivations, and experiences as infantrymen on the Western Front in World War I. What was it like to kill or maim German soldiers? To see friends killed or maimed by the enemy? To return home after experiencing such violence? Again and again, soldiers wrestle with questions like these, putting into words what only they can tell. They also reflect on why they volunteered, why they fought, what their training was, and how ill-prepared they were for what they found overseas. They describe how they interacted with the civilian populations in England and France, how they saw the rewards and frustrations of occupation duty when they desperately wanted to go home, and--perhaps most significantly--what it all added up to in the end. Together their responses create a vivid and nuanced group portrait of the soldiers who fought with the American Expeditionary Forces on the battlefields of Aisne-Marne, Argonne Forest, Belleau Wood, Chateau-Thierry, the Marne, Metz, Meuse-Argonne, St. Mihiel, Sedan, and Verdun during the First World War. The picture that emerges is often at odds with the popular notion of the disillusioned doughboy. Though hardened and harrowed by combat, the veteran heard here is for the most part proud of his service, service undertaken for duty, honor, and country. In short, a hundred years later, the doughboy once more speaks in his own true voice.

A Spurious Solution to a Genuine Problem: An In-Depth Look at the Import Drugs Act of 1848

The Import Drugs Act has been relatively ignored by the academic community, and is most often relegated to a passing reference in a footnote. Yet the Act represents an important step in our nationi?½s creation of a safe supply of drugs, and thus deserves some attention. In this paper, I give the Act that attention, and seek to place it in an historical context. In Chapter 1, I describe how Congressional action was prompted by medical conditions during the Mexican War and the belief that American soldiers were being given adulterated drugs. Chapter 2 describes the involvement of the professional health organizations in the fight against adulterated drugs, and suggests reasons why drug adulteration posed such a problem to doctors and pharmacists. In Chapter 3, I look at the legislative history of the Act, through an analysis of the House Report and the Congressional debates on the matter. Finally, in Chapter 4, I look at the mechanics of how the Act was implemented by the Customs Service, and describe its short term effects on the problem of adulterated drugs.

Book Review: Photojournalists on War: The Untold Stories From Iraq, by Michael Kamber

Photojournalists on War: The Untold Stories From Iraq. Michael Kamber. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2013. 300 pp. $65 hbk.It is rare to review books that are as powerful and challenging as this very heavy book. Literally heavy, as this is a large coffee table-sized book, with high-quality photo reproduction on thick paper. It is also intensely heavy in the sense of being very moving and profound-even more so, given that as I write, photojournalists were being killed and beheaded in the Middle East. And the fighting continues.Photojournalists at War should be required reading for all photojournalism students or anyone wanting to be a war correspondent. Author Michael Kamber's intent was to portray the craft of conflict photography and provide a unique oral history by photojournalists of America's 9-year conflict in the Middle East from 2003 to war's end in 2011.Kamber has worked as a photojournalist for over 25 years and covered the war in Iraq for the New York Times between 2003 and 2012. A World Press Photo Award recipient, he has been nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize, twice for photography and once for reporting.He did an excellent job collecting eye-witness accounts by photojournalists from prominent news organizations about how they covered the war and their views on the role of the media, issues of censorship, and many personal issues they faced. Kamber dedicated his book to the 150 Iraqi journalists killed covering the war and Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, photojournalists who were killed in Libya in 2011.This book suggests that traditionally photojournalists have been silent witnesses to war, with a different approach in their craft. But Kamber brings the voices of his interviewees alive as they describe graphically how this war had no front lines and how the photographers themselves were targets and worked close to death on a daily basis. More photojournalists were killed in Iraq than in any other modern conflict.Censorship became the starting point for this book, writes Kamber, due to his own experiences while embedded with troops in combat and with military rules that prevented photographing wounded or dead American soldiers. As he began interviewing other photojournalists, however, his goal became to create a record of what happened in this war.The book contains Q&A interviews with 39 men and women photojournalists (organized in alphabetical order by name), and includes well-captioned photos by each. …

Frantisek (Frank) Lichtenberk, 1945–2015: A Tribute

Frantisek (Frank) Lichtenberk died in a train accident in Auckland on April 29, 2015, aged 69. (1) During a career of forty years, he made outstanding contributions to descriptive and comparative-historical research on Oceanic languages and to linguistic theory. Fie was arguably the best all-round linguist to specialize in the indigenous languages of the Pacific. That's a big call, because there have been many accomplished scholars working in this field over the last 150 years, but 1 can think of no other who has done so many different things quite so well: productive field work, writing prodigious grammars, compiling dictionaries, doing phonological and morphosyntactic reconstruction and dialect geography, drawing culture-historical inferences from lexical reconstructions, and seeking general principles of language structure and change. His papers and books are meticulously researched, rigorously argued, and beautifully constructed. He gained a world reputation for his writings on grammatical typology and language change, which drew heavily on examples from Oceanic languages. But such was his modesty that he was often underestimated by those not familiar with the full range of his accomplishments. Frantisek Lichtenberk was born in Dubi, a small town in what is now the Czech Republic, on December 31, 1945. He had a younger brother, Jiri. Their father held a senior post in a government ministry. When Frantisek was in his early teens the family moved to Prague, where on the advice of his father he attended a technical high school. He was not much interested by what he learned there but he excelled in math, especially mental calculation. After high school, he completed two years of national military service, then got a job in the Vyzkumny ustav Telekominkci (VUT, or Research Institute of Telecommunications) in Prague. He was initially employed in the electrical section as a technician/draftsman, but after a few months was transferred to another section where his duties were to translate English and German technical and scientific journals into Czech. At the VUT, Frank became good (ultimately lifelong) friends with a workmate, Robert Pechar, who recalls that they traveled together to Hamburg and to Italy, where (being on a tight budget) they slept on beaches and in city parks. In 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, cmshing the Spring. The following year, Frank and Robert were able to obtain exit permits to attend an electronics trade fair in Hanover, Germany, and just before Easter, 1969, they traveled to Germany and sought asylum. They stayed for six months in a refugee camp in Zimdorf, near Nuremberg, until they were granted asylum. While in the camp, they worked in an American Army barracks canteen. Frank already had a good reading knowledge of English, but by conversing with American soldiers his conversational English improved by leaps and bounds. He then moved to Cologne for a few months until he was able to migrate to Toronto, Canada. In Toronto, he got a job, possibly as a draftsman, working for a company that made cash registers. In the early 1970s, Frank began a BA at the University of Toronto, and chose to major in linguistics, a field he had become interested in while working in Prague. Martin Joos (by then retired) had built a strong and eclectic Department of Linguistics at Toronto. Frank said that the teacher who most influenced him there was Henry Gleason, author of the celebrated textbook, An introduction to descriptive linguistics. A fellow student at Toronto, Jim Martin, recalls that Gleason encouraged students to work on non-IndoEuropean languages. Other faculty included Jack Chambers (teaching transformational-generative grammar), William Samarin (field methods, American structuralism), Peter Reich (stratificational grammar and psycholinguistics), Ed Burstynsky (phonology, Prague School), Hank Rogers (phonology), and Ron Wardhaugh (sociolinguistics). In 1975, Frank embarked on an MA in linguistics at Toronto by coursework, while employed as a teaching assistant. …

Doughboys on the Great War: how American soldiers viewed their military service

Doughboys on the Great War: how American soldiers viewed their military service

Surveying lactation professionals regarding breastfeeding and marijuana use

Aims: More than two million American soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and returning home from deployment has proven to be a difficult task (Hinojosa and Hinojosa, 2011). Although social support may be a healthy means of relieving postdeployment distress (Campbell et al., 2007), marijuana use has become a common mechanism for coping with reintegration difficulties (Boden et al., 2013; Golub and Bennett, 2014) and is prevalent in returning veterans (Bonn-Miller et al., 2012). This study examined the associations betweenmarijuana-related problems, DSM-IV cannabis dependence, and post-deployment social support and distress in OIF/OEF/OND veterans. Methods: Returning veterans (n=152, mean age (SD) =32.30 (9.09); 93%male)whodeployedpost9/11/01completed self-report measures of current depression (CES-D), marijuana use problems (MPS), and perceived social support (DRRI). Structured Clinical Interviews for DSM-IV were conducted to determine past year cannabis dependence diagnosis. Results: 41% of veterans reported marijuana use in the past year, and 28% reported use in the past month. Of past year marijuana users, 22% met criteria for DSM-IV cannabis dependence diagnosis. Post-deployment social support (B=−0.71, 95% CI [−0.84, −0.58], sr2 = 0.43, p< .001), marijuana-related problems (B=2.31, 95% CI [0.76, 3.86], sr2 = 0.03, p< .01), and number of current cannabis dependence symptoms (B=3.0, 95% CI [0.72, 5.28], sr2 = 0.02, p< .05) independently predicted CES-D depression. Marijuana problems and dependence symptoms did not moderate the relationship between social support and depression. Conclusions: Social support and marijuana-related problems and dependence were independently associated with depression. Findings suggest that veterans may benefit from increased social support as a way of coping with post-deployment distress. Engagement in interventions and treatments focused on reducing marijuana use may help improve post-deployment outcomes. Financial support: R01 DA033425 (Metrik, Borsari).

Social support, cannabis misuse, and post-deployment depression in returning veterans

Aims: More than two million American soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and returning home from deployment has proven to be a difficult task (Hinojosa and Hinojosa, 2011). Although social support may be a healthy means of relieving postdeployment distress (Campbell et al., 2007), marijuana use has become a common mechanism for coping with reintegration difficulties (Boden et al., 2013; Golub and Bennett, 2014) and is prevalent in returning veterans (Bonn-Miller et al., 2012). This study examined the associations betweenmarijuana-related problems, DSM-IV cannabis dependence, and post-deployment social support and distress in OIF/OEF/OND veterans. Methods: Returning veterans (n=152, mean age (SD) =32.30 (9.09); 93%male)whodeployedpost9/11/01completed self-report measures of current depression (CES-D), marijuana use problems (MPS), and perceived social support (DRRI). Structured Clinical Interviews for DSM-IV were conducted to determine past year cannabis dependence diagnosis. Results: 41% of veterans reported marijuana use in the past year, and 28% reported use in the past month. Of past year marijuana users, 22% met criteria for DSM-IV cannabis dependence diagnosis. Post-deployment social support (B=−0.71, 95% CI [−0.84, −0.58], sr2 = 0.43, p< .001), marijuana-related problems (B=2.31, 95% CI [0.76, 3.86], sr2 = 0.03, p< .01), and number of current cannabis dependence symptoms (B=3.0, 95% CI [0.72, 5.28], sr2 = 0.02, p< .05) independently predicted CES-D depression. Marijuana problems and dependence symptoms did not moderate the relationship between social support and depression. Conclusions: Social support and marijuana-related problems and dependence were independently associated with depression. Findings suggest that veterans may benefit from increased social support as a way of coping with post-deployment distress. Engagement in interventions and treatments focused on reducing marijuana use may help improve post-deployment outcomes. Financial support: R01 DA033425 (Metrik, Borsari).

The Emperor of Any Place by Tim Wynne-Jones (review)

Reviewed by: The Emperor of Any Place by Tim Wynne-Jones Karen Coats Wynne-Jones, Tim The Emperor of Any Place. Candlewick, 2015 [336p] ISBN 978-0-7636-6973-7 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 7-10 Evan is stunned by the sudden death of his father. Not knowing what else to do, he calls his grandfather, Griff, a severe military man whom his father hated, to come help settle his dad’s affairs. Griff had little respect for his son, who fled to Canada to evade the draft during the Vietnam War, and it doesn’t initially look like things will go any better with his grandson. Meanwhile, a phone call alerts Evan to a family mystery involving Griff; prior to his death, his father had received a book containing a translation of the diary of a Japanese soldier from World War II who was isolated on an island in the Pacific. Evan becomes engrossed in the diary, which tells of an American soldier stranded on the island until Griff comes and rescues him. Questions remain: how does the story end for the Japanese soldier, and why does Griff want the diary to disappear? Evan and Griff walk a knife edge between contempt and suspicion in their dealings with each other, and their ultimate method of reaching détente is both moving and masterfully tied in with the diary itself. The layers of intergenerational strife, savage warfare, lingering suspicion and gradual healing are quilted into a warming narrative that is both uncompromisingly tragic and holistically redemptive. Readers will carry this haunting story with them for a long time. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

A Search for Meaning in Iconic News Images of the Iraq War

This analysis discusses the subjective negotiations of meaning in two iconic news images created from traditional and nontraditional sources during the Iraq War. Semiotic analysis is used to tease out the normative role media images play in perpetuating and reinforcing moral, social, and culture values in Western society by discussing, in this study, a now-famous iconic image taken by an American soldier depicting a hooded Iraqi prisoner being tortured at Abu Ghraib as well as an embedded journalist's image of a tired U.S. Marine. Ultimately, it is believed that iconic news images can reveal a dichotomy of conflicting ideals, normative values, ideological beliefs, and moral biases.

Gutiérrez Edward A. , Doughboys on the Great War : How American Soldiers Viewed their Military Experience , Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2014, 308 p., 34,95 $

Gutiérrez Edward A. , Doughboys on the Great War : How American Soldiers Viewed their Military Experience , Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, 2014, 308 p., 34,95 $

Doughboys on the Great War: How American Soldiers Viewed their Military Experience

Doughboys on the Great War: How American Soldiers Viewed their Military Experience

Between Homeland and Prisoners of War: remaking terror

The Israeli series Prisoners of War (Hatufim, Keshet, Israel, Gideon Raff, 2009–2011) and Homeland (Showtime, US 2011–2013; developed by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa based on the Israeli series with Gideon Raff as one of the producers) is a special case of hypertextuality (Genette 1982). Both serial dramas revolve around prisoners of war who have returned home and their families, intelligence agency operatives and terror organizations operating behind the scenes. In these serializations of the thriller genre, narratives of paranoia and conspiracy render invisible terror visible on the screen. The focalization of the various plots and sub-plots as well as their reception spaces are different however. Prisoners of War tells the story of three soldierswho are kidnapped, held captive for 17 years and suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder on their return home. The series was broadcast at a time when intensive negotiations were underway for the release of three IDF soldiers who had been kidnapped. Homeland, on the other hand, places centre stage a female CIA operative (Claire Danes) who suffers from bipolar disorder. The first season was broadcast in post-9/11 America while American soldiers were still fighting in Iraq. Both series therefore directly address their audiences and relate to the public sphere outside the studio. The reception of these texts incorporates their meaning as reconstructed by their publics. Thus, while both series involve a ritual of scapegoating as a means of resolving conflict, each reflects and produces its own repertoire of reality (‘realemes’). Interestingly, a traumatic excess is inscribed on both male and female bodies as each series rewrites its own society's myth: the binding of Isaac in the Israeli Prisoners of War and Joan of Arc in the American Homeland.