Band Of Brothers Research Articles

Michael F. Cusato, O.F.M., and Michael J. P. Robson. Testimony, Narrative and Image: Studies in Medieval History, Hagiography, and Art in Memory of Rosalind B. Brooke. The Medieval Franciscans, 20. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022. 446 pp., 33 color ill.

The ever-intriguing “Franciscan question” is really several questions in one. What were the intentions of the historical St. Francis (ca. 1181–1226) for his band of brothers? To approach this truth as nearly as we can, how should we interpret the oldest primary sources on the life and ideas of the Poverello? How was the Franciscan vocation received and reinterpreted over the two centuries following his death, in the visual arts as well as text?

Writing and Rewriting Nationhood: "Henry V" and Political Appropriation of Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s Henry V is often regarded as a nationalistic play and has been appropriated for political spin and propaganda to enhance the sense of national unity. Shakespeare captures the emerging nationalistic feeling of the Tudor era in Henry’s emphasis on national history and pride, but various parts of the text suggest a more diverse and complex figures of the king and his subjects than a war hero and the united nation. Such complexity, however, is often ignored in political appropriation. Laurence Olivier’s film adaptation during WWII glamorizes the war and defines the English nation as a courageous “band of brothers” through its presentation of Shakespeare’s play a shared story or history of national victory. Kenneth Branagh’s film in 1989, on the other hand, captures the ugliness of war but it still romanticizes the sacrifice for the country. In 2016, Shakespeare was made part of the Brexit discourse of growing nationalism at the time of the EU referendum. Brexit was imagined as a victory that will bring back freedom and sovereignty the country once enjoyed, and Shakespeare was used to represent the greatness of Britain. Shakespeare’s text, however, depicts the war against the continent in a more skeptical than glorifying tone. The war scenes are scattered with humorous dialogues and critical comments and the multi-national captains of Henry’s army are constantly at odds with one another. Shakespeare thus provides us with a wider view of nationhood, resisting the simplifying force of politics.

Band of Brothers or Band of Others?: Rhetoric, Veterans, and Civil Rights Fights in Germany and the United States

Research suggests that marginalized groups can use military service to win greater governmental and social acceptance by using civic republican rhetoric, however, conditions in which claims-making rhetoric is coercive are underspecified. Because rhetorical effectiveness requires sympathetic ears, we examine the influence of (1) expectations and political efforts of marginalized group members seeking greater acceptance, (2) whether majority group economic status is outpacing marginalized groups seeking improved treatment, and (3) whether marginalized groups have influential military veterans from majority groups as allies. We apply these factors to explain the claims-making failure of German Jews following the First World War and the success of African Americans after the Second World War. From the African American case, we also conclude that military service led to greater socio-political inclusion and rights based on development of future political actors through leadership development processes and inter-group contact, especially regarding Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.

“The Band of Brothers”: The Mobilization of English Welsh Dual Identities in Second World War Britain

AbstractIn the run-up to the Second World War, the War Office agreed to organize territorial units that recruited specifically on the grounds of English Welsh dual identities. These formations, which comprised the 99th London Welsh Heavy Anti-Aircraft regiment and the 46th Liverpool Welsh Royal Tank Regiment, began recruiting in 1939 from English cities with significant Welsh populations. This article explores the mobilization and performance of English Welsh identities during the Second World War and reflects upon why, at a time of global conflict, some English men opted to enlist on the basis of Welsh antecedents. Relatively little attention has been paid to the plurality of British identity in wartime or to how the existence of what historian Thomas Hajkowski has called “hybrid ‘dual identities’” within the constituent countries of the United Kingdom informed the functioning of Britishness during the Second World War. Making use of previously unpublished and original life-writing sources, this article illuminates the significance of dual identifications across two nations at once—in this case, Wales and England—within the multinational state of Britain at war. Overall, by examining the intersectionality between subjective wartime constructions of kin, home, and nation(s), it points to how a sense of dual identifications could feed into recruitment patterns and potentially bolster combat motivation and morale. By highlighting the interconnectedness between constituent nations of Britain, and the complexities of identity formation within Britishness, this article adds to the literature that complicates the notion of fixed singular national identities and underscores the importance of dual identifications within and across the borders of the constituent nations in advancing our understanding of twentieth-century Britain.

A band of brothers: the modern trade union

Trade unions can be associated with workplace unrest. However, employers that engage with unions often find that workplace harmony is greatly improved. Adam Bernstein elaborates.

Lancastrians, Tudors, and World War II: British and German Historical Films as Propaganda, 1933–1945

In World War II the Allies and Axis deployed propaganda in myriad forms, among which cinema was especially important in arousing patriotism and boosting morale. Britain and Germany made propaganda films from Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 to the war’s end in 1945, most commonly documentaries, historical films, and after 1939, fictional films about the ongoing conflict. Curiously, the historical films included several about fifteenth and sixteenth century England. In The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), director Alexander Korda—an admirer of Winston Churchill and opponent of appeasement—emphasizes the need for a strong navy to defend Tudor England against the ‘German’ Charles V. The same theme appears with Philip II of Spain as an analog for Hitler in Arthur B. Wood’s Drake of England (1935), William Howard’s Fire Over England (1937), parts of which reappear in the propaganda film The Lion Has Wings (1939), and the pro-British American film The Sea Hawk (1940). Meanwhile, two German films little known to present-day English language viewers turned the tables with English villains. In Gustav Ucicky’s Das Mädchen Johanna (Joan of Arc, 1935), Joan is the female embodiment of Hitler and wages heroic warfare against the English. In Carl Froelich’s Das Herz der Königin (The Heart of a Queen, 1940), Elizabeth I is an analog for an imperialistic Churchill and Mary, Queen of Scots an avatar of German virtues. Finally, to boost British morale on D-Day at Churchill’s behest, Laurence Olivier directed a masterly film version of William Shakespeare’s Henry V (1944), edited to emphasize the king’s virtues and courage, as in the St. Crispin’s Day speech with its “We few, we proud, we band of brothers”. This essay examines the aesthetic appeal, the historical accuracy, and the presentist propaganda in such films.

Mutiny in the Band of Brothers: A Juxtaposition of Two Leaders

The first episode of the critically acclaimed television series, Band of Brothers, juxtaposes two leaders navigating an environment of uncertainty and high-risk stakes. We review this first episode, titled Currahee, with the intention of adding to the library of teaching resources that instructors may use to illustrate leader–follower relations, power dynamics, contingency models, and follower voice and mutiny. This dramatic depiction of a team of paratroopers preparing for military engagement in World War II challenges students to examine the human and organizational antecedents and consequences associated with mundane, incompetent, tyrannical, or inspirational leaders. We provide a detailed set of discussion prompts and points of analysis for selected clips that will guide instructors as they implement this resource as part of an in-class exercise, a video case exam, and/or a written assignment for face-to-face and synchronous or asynchronous online classroom formats.

Band of Brothers (And Sisters): Gender Framing in U.S. Army Commercial Advertising

The U.S. Army spends over 7 billion dollars in recruitment advertising, with its largest percentages going toward television marketing. However, little research has been dedicated to military advertising besides strategic recommendations. This project offers a critical investigation on the depiction of gender in military advertising. A content analysis on a sample of U.S. Army commercials produced between 2008 and 2018 offers an exploratory discussion on how gender is visually and verbally framed within the Army’s advertising.

Xcalibur, The Musical by Stephen Rayne

Reviewed by: Xcalibur, The Musical by Stephen Rayne Kevin J. Harty stephen rayne, dir., Xcalibur, The Musical. Music by Frank Wildhorn, book by Ivan Menchell, and lyrics by Robin Lerner. Korean Lyricist/Script: Park Chun Hwi. Executive Producer: Eum Hong Hyeon for EMK Musical Company International, 2019. Starring in the recorded version Kai (Arthur), Sophie Kim (Guinevere), and Park Hang Hyun (Lancelot). Streaming on Broadway on Demand since Summer 2020. 150 minutes. Stage musicals are big business in Korea, where they feature casts and orchestras so large that they would bankrupt Broadway and West End productions, and play to audiences numbering in the thousands. Xcalibur, The Musical is such a production, although Xcalibur had its beginnings in 2014 in Switzerland. In a formula that has proven successful for any number of producers and composers, the show was originally written in English and then translated into German. The Swiss production then toured Germany for two years of fine tuning, after which it was translated back into English and then into Korean for the 2019 Seoul premiere, which attracted more than enthusiastic sold-out audiences once it was announced that the three principal roles would be rotated among leading K-pop performers. The Korean production was subsequently recorded for audio and video distribution, and for streaming on Broadway on Demand in Korean (and Latin!—for the incantations of Merlin and Morgan) with English subtitles, either for free or for a nominal fee. Medievalism in the form of the stage musical is rare. Spamalot stands in a category all by itself because it is, well, Spamalot. Pippin, despite its lack of any historicity, has its moments. Marco Polo, in several less than memorable musicals, gets to fall unwittingly in love with the daughter of Genghis Khan, with both father and daughter invariably played by non-Asian actors. Nothing is added to the legends of Robin Hood by Twang! or of Joan of Arc by Goodtime Charley. Camelot has not aged well, and has always been problematic, despite any Kennedy-era nostalgia, because of its genre (it is a musical tragedy), and even worse its gender politics (‘How to Handle a Woman’ indeed!). Xcalibur is harmless enough—and its plot is markedly different than that of the original Swiss production, which was entitled Artus-Excalibur, and which told a much more complicated version of the Arthuriad. What may be most interesting about Xcalibur is that it is simply a rare example of a Korean take on the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Xcalibur avoids one trap that many modern versions of the Arthuriad fall into: it does not seek to tell the whole story of Arthur and his knights, though it does include a significant number of well-known highpoints. It offers the (back)story of the sword in the stone, the founding of the Round Table, the conflict between Arthur and his half-sister Morgan, the betrayal of Lancelot and Guinevere, and an Arthur victorious who saves his country from an invading horde of pagan Saxons—which is, admittedly, more than enough to fill 150 minutes of stage time. Xcalibur opens in fifth-century Britain on a farm in the west managed by the kindly Ector, who has adopted Arthur from Merlin, along with any number of other boys (the band of brothers who will become the Knights of the Round Table), including Lancelot whom the kindly Ector has rescued from a broken home and an [End Page 77] abusive father. The country is riven within by political divisions though united in its adoption of the Christian faith and threatened from without by pagan Saxons under the leadership of the cruel Wolf, who set about doing what we expect pagan marauders to do. Attacking and sacking a monastery, the Saxons murder the nuns and monks, and take captive Morgan, the daughter of Uther Pendragon who has been imprisoned there since the death of her father. Morgan yearns for her freedom, the throne, and Merlin—not necessarily in that order—and Xcalibur advances a complicated love-hate relationship between Morgan and Merlin. Uther had succumbed to the fire of the dragon—its destructive force—instead of the breath...

Band of Brothers? The Complications of Fraternity in Faulkner's World War I Fiction

Band of Brothers? The Complications of Fraternity in Faulkner's World War I Fiction

Pollyanna and the Grim Reaper

Herman Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids”[1] finds the story’s narrator in London. It’s “the smiling month of May”[2] 1849, and he’s carousing with affluent unmarried lawyers who welcome him to their “band of brothers.” Two years later, in a chilly New England mill where recycled cotton and linen are used to make paper, he encounters women workers preparing, pulping, pressing, and folding rags. Their faces are “pale with work, and blue with cold,” their eyes “supernatural with unrelated misery.” Speech is “banished from the spot.” The two groups are separated by time, space, gender, class, climate, labor, communication, and risk, the bachelors’ fancy attire and healthy complexions worlds away from a toxic rag room where the “air swam with the fine, poisonous particles, which from all sides darted . . . into the lungs.” But the narrator connects the scenes and their actors. Realizing that London ragpickers regularly collected discarded clothing for export to US paper mills, he surmises that “among these heaps of rags there may be some old shirts, gathered from the dormitories of the Paradise of Bachelors” (Melville 1855). Melville’s juxtaposition of the perilous labor of print technology’s women workers with the luxurious cloisters of the male ruling class has generated significant critical engagement (Serlin 1995; Thompson 2018). This remarkable work of short fiction alerts us to the media’s two historic environmental roles: representation and materiality.

Taking Social Cohesion to Task: Perceptions of Transgender Military Inclusion and Concepts of Cohesion

AbstractRecent political debates over the inclusion of transgender servicemembers in the US military center around the impact such inclusion will have on unit cohesion and effectiveness. Missing from the debate, however, are the perceptions of those who do the soldiering. What are their perceptions of cohesion? Do they, like political leaders and the general public, believe unit cohesion leads to military effectiveness? In other words, how much does the narrative at the elite level—that insists excluding minority groups is a military necessity—match the perceptions of those who serve? Drawing on an original survey of 151 current and former members of the US military, our results suggest that servicemembers’ perceptions mirror those in the general public: political ideology is correlated with beliefs that minority groups disrupt unit cohesion. We find that conservatives are more likely to believe that the inclusion of transgender soldiers will negatively impact cohesion and undermine unit effectiveness. Moreover, conservatives are more likely to endorse a conceptualization of cohesion that hinges on the social—“people like me” or “band of brothers”—dynamics of cohesion rather than more professional, task-oriented conceptions of cohesion. However, military experience affects these perceptions: respondents with combat experience, who held/hold a higher rank, and who are currently serving are more likely to endorse a task-based conception of cohesion that ties cohesion to professionalism and competence, rather than social identity.

A Historicist Novel

The vortex of the twentieth century, the late 1930s and early to mid 1940s, provides an appropriate setting for Jennifer Egan's experiment in historical fiction. Many popular histories have glorified the bands of brothers and Rosie the Riveters of the so-called greatest generation. The best fiction and poetry of the 1940s offered a different, unflattering view. Journalists from that era—Martha Gellhorn, for one—said they needed fiction to get the history right (313). Literary treatments of the war focus on its incommunicability and on the crisis of meaning it inspired, but they have been vastly overshadowed by popular history books, documentaries, movies, and television shows that depend for their very production and distribution on an appeal to the fantasies that the contemporary war literature contradicts. In a decade when the idea of making America great again seems supercharged by notions of America when it was supposedly great, we can use some diving into the wreck.

Crossing the Borders of Teaching English with the Help of Band of Brothers

Abstract The present article discusses the popularity of English since World War II, which has turned to a decisive lingua franca in Europe over the past decades and has been a major component of the thriving language industry. Our hypothesis is that when it comes to teaching foreign languages, most notably English, the inclusion of translation is rather limited (at least in Eastern Europe), and translation is even “stigmatized and excluded” from instruction (cf. Venuti 2013). However, multimedia products from the USA, most notably Hollywood movies, are highly popular among teenagers – thus, we argue for the benefits of watching (together with their scripts and subtitles) and using them as “natural” sources of language which may be used to counterbalance the textbooks and grammar books originating from the UK. We exemplify specific grammar- and vocabulary-related border crossings of institutionalized language teaching (e.g. Subject–Verb disagreement or double negative) from Band of Brothers, a highly popular TV mini-series. We also highlight the importance of the target language and individual norms when translating or subtitling taboo words. The conclusion section mentions the effectiveness of translations through subtitles, knowing that the effort is diminished when learning and entertainment is combined (cf. Caimi 2006) in the hope of serving the real needs of the learners.

Bands of brothers and in-laws: Waorani warfare, marriage and alliance formation.

The root of modern human warfare lies in the lethal coalitionary violence of males in small-scale societies. However, there is a paucity of quantitative data concerning the form and function of coalitionary violence in this setting. Debates exist over how lethal coalitions are constituted, as well as the motivations and benefits for males to join such groups. Data from a lowland Amazonian population, the Waorani of Ecuador, illuminate three issues: (i) the degree to which raiding parties are composed of groups of fraternal kin as opposed to strategic alliances of actual or potential affinal kin; (ii) the extent to which individuals use pre-existing affinal ties to motivate others to participate in war or leverage warfare as a mechanism to create such ties; and (iii) the extent to which participation in raiding is driven by rewards associated with future marriage opportunities. Analyses demonstrate that Waorani raiding parties were composed of a mix of males who were potential affines, actual affines and fraternal kin, suggesting that men used pre-existing genetic, lineal and social kin ties for recruiting raid partners and used raiding as a venue to create novel social relationships. Furthermore, analyses demonstrate that males leveraged raiding alliances to achieve marriage opportunities for themselves as well as for their children. Overall, it appears that a complex set of motivations involving individual rewards, kin marriage opportunities, subtle coercion and the assessment of alliance strength promote violent intergroup conflict among the Waorani. These findings illustrate the complex inter-relationships among kin selection, coalition building and mating success in our species.

Triumph of the Till

Triumph of the Till

Beyond the band of brothers: the US military and the myth that women can't fight∗

Beyond the band of brothers: the US military and the myth that women can't fight∗

Book Review: Beyond the band of brothers: The U.S. military and the myth that women can’t fight

Book Review: Beyond the band of brothers: The U.S. military and the myth that women can’t fight

Introduction to Armed Forces & Society

This Armed Forces & Society issue is on women in the contemporary armed forces in the United States and other nations to include the South African National Defense Force and the Australian Defense Force. This issue contains a collection of nine papers, each reviewing a current aspect of women serving in the military since the post–Vietnam War Era. There are also two review essays of Megan Mackenzie’s book, Beyond the Band of Brothers: The US Military and the Myth That Women Can’t Fight. An overview of changing laws and the expanding role of women in the military is provided in this introduction, as well as summaries of the nine articles, and comments on the two book reviews mentioned above.

Book Review: Beyond the band of brothers: The U.S. military and the myth that women can’t fight

Book Review: Beyond the band of brothers: The U.S. military and the myth that women can’t fight