Queering American Military History Whitt, Jacqueline E
International journal of military history and historiography,
05/2021, Letnik:
42, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Abstract
This historiographical article examines the state of the field of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (lgbtq) history in the United States military. It examines the field's ...foundations and legacies from women's history and the history of gender and sexuality as well as three threads that run through the field: sexuality and gender; sexuality, state control and citizenship; and sexuality and lived experience. The essay also explores interdisciplinary and theoretical connections and suggests areas for future research. The article argues that uncovering, centring, and mainstreaming lgbtq history - that is queering military history - is central to the broader field of military history because it relates to questions of power and the organisation of sexuality and gender performance and identity.
During the second half of the twentieth century, the American military chaplaincy underwent a profound transformation. Broad-based and ecumenical in the World War II era, the chaplaincy emerged from ...the Vietnam War as generally conservative and evangelical. Before and after the Vietnam War, the chaplaincy tended to mirror broader social, political, military, and religious trends. During the Vietnam War, however, chaplains' experiences and interpretations of war placed them on the margins of both military and religious cultures. Because chaplains lived and worked amid many communities--religious and secular, military and civilian, denominational and ecumenical--they often found themselves mediating heated struggles over the conflict, on the home front as well as on the front lines.In this benchmark study, Jacqueline Whitt foregrounds the voices of chaplains themselves to explore how those serving in Vietnam acted as vital links between diverse communities, working personally and publicly to reconcile apparent tensions between their various constituencies. Whitt also offers a unique perspective on the realities of religious practice in the war's foxholes and firebases, as chaplains ministered with a focus on soldiers' shared experiences rather than traditional theologies.
In the second part of the book, Armstrong explores the development of Christianity and Islam and concludes with a long chapter on the traditions of crusade and jihad. In the final part of the book, ...which covers the ground most familiar to the average reader, Armstrong details the development of the modern Western idea of "religion" as being personal and private; the advent of Lockean political philosophy that advocated the separation of church and state; and the rise of the liberal, secular nation-state.
Willing and Qualified Jacqueline E. Whitt
Landpower in the Long War,
05/2019
Book Chapter
On 10 September 2001, the US military’s force structure reflected a decade of post–Cold War personnel and manpower policies, shaped by the First Gulf War, global humanitarian and military ...interventions, and administrative decisions under Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and William Jefferson Clinton. Trends toward more inclusive recruiting policies that had begun in the 1970s, with the inception of the all-volunteer force, continued; the services were actively recruiting a more diverse force to fill staffing requirements, and military pay and benefits and the promise of meritocratic promotions attracted women and racial and ethnic minorities to military service. Increased demographic
In the United States, attitudes toward people whose sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression (SOGIE) is something other than straight, cisgender, and heterosexual have, until very ...recently, been negative—associated with perversion, deviance, mental illness, and criminality. Historically, those in the United States military who engaged in homosexual relationships or acts could face punishment, ostracism, or reprisal within or removal from the military. Not until 2011 could gay, lesbian, and bisexual people serve openly, and while many celebrate new norms and cultural acceptance, full integration is yet incomplete. For transgender people and those whose gender identity or expression does
Somewhere in Vietnam, in a bomb crater filled with water, Joseph Dulany baptized soldiers, and in those moments, remnants of death and destruction became founts for the symbolic waters of life. On ...another military base, James Johnson grieved as he held the lifeless body of a friend who was killed on a mission Johnson would have been on had he not stayed behind to baptize another soldier, and was left pondering the significance of trading a new spiritual birth for a death. Later, Johnson recorded in great detail the mutilation of a Viet Cong corpse by American servicemen with C-ration
Though chaplain David Knight went to Vietnam with romantic visions of war, wishing for a “baptism by fire,” he returned with a more sober view of it: “I saw the horror, the brutality, and the ...sinfulness of a nation raped by war. I witnessed war as the ultimate breakdown of human morality.” Nevertheless, Knight concluded that his wartime experiences allowed him to return “home with a greater understanding of the Lord than ever before. . . . I discovered that, regardless of man’s sin and rebellion, we are not at the mercy of an impersonal God. We are not subject
Dissent and Mission JACQUELINE E. WHITT
Bringing God to Men,
02/2014
Book Chapter
“To hell with Jehovah.” One line in one song included in the Armed Forces Hymnal sparked the controversy. In 1974, a tense congressional election year, the inclusion of Sydney Carter’s song “It Was ...on a Friday Morning” provoked accusations of blasphemy not only from religious groups but also from American politicians and policy-makers, including Senator Strom Thurmond and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. The incident was a flash in the pan of the larger “culture wars” that increasingly engulfed the United States, but it indicated a growing divide between the ecumenical ideals of the traditional chaplaincy and the increasingly sectarian
