Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare

The second edition of Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare includes updated materials on the World Wars, the Cold War, and the Global War on Terror. Of particular interest are the additional perspectives and experiences of non-white, non-American, and non-Europeans that help give agency to these groups and add balance to the book’s overall focus on the modern West. This book fills a gap in existing scholarship because no other book has so broadly explored the historiographical and theoretical intersections of the fields of race, gender, and war. It also asks readers to grapple with how and why cultural constructions of identity are transformed by war, as well as how and why race and gender in turn influence the nature of military institutions and conflicts. Readers are guided through a series of case studies, ranging from the early nineteenth century to the twenty-first century. Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare does not merely recount a list of “great moments” in race and gender in military history, but instead creates a meta-landscape in which readers can learn to identify for themselves the disjunctures, flaws, and critical synergies in the traditional memory and history of a largely monochrome and white, male-exclusive military experience in the United States and Europe. The second edition’s expanded final chapter highlights the fact that these conversations remain relevant in the twenty-first century. Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare is both a synthesis of existing scholarship and a starting point for future study.