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This book examines the gendered dimensions of vulnerability, care, and humanitarianism before, during and after the First World War. It explores how war disrupts societal structures, transforms care relationships, and reinforces or challenges gendered hierarchies. It analyses how wartime welfare and care work carried out by individuals, charities, and state institutions reflected power structures, formed identities and influenced post-war political activism. This book uses interdisciplinary approaches and creates conversations across national and disciplinary borders, covering Western, Central and Eastern Europe. Topics include auto/biographical studies of care-givers, showing how their wartime experiences fed into their post-war identities and how they shaped understandings and structures of care work. By foregrounding care and welfare as central to wartime experiences, it provides new insights into the long-term social and political impacts of war, offering historical perspectives relevant to contemporary global conflicts and crises. This book therefore identifies emerging questions and directions within First World War Gender Studies, as well as reflecting on continuities and changes within contemporary theories of how gender is bound up with militarism, warfare, and conflict resolution.
List of contents
PART I - INTRODUCTION: CONCEPTUALIZING VULNERABILITY, CARE AND WELFARE DURING THE 'GREATER WAR' (1912-1923).- Ingrid Sharp and Heidrun Zettelbauer; Introduction.- Susan Grayzel, Christa Hämmerle, Mary McAuliffe, Jessica Meyer, Ingrid Sharp; Round Table.- PART II - NEGOTIATING CITIZENSHIP, NATION AND THE STATE: WELFARE POLITICS AS INTERSECTIONAL AND GENDERED SPACE.- Judit Acsàdy; Foundations of Institutionalized Care as Social Work: Women's Activities to Support the Vulnerable, the Needy and the Victims During and After WW1.- Heidrun Zettelbauer; Negotiating Female Citizenship? Voluntary War Welfare Politics and its Gender Dimensions in Multi-Ethnic Spaces of the Habsburg Monarchy.- Clara- Anna Egger; Transcending the Political: The Case of Women's International League and Freedom and its Humanitarian Thought.- Ingrid Sharp; Comment.- PART III - GENDERED EXPERIENCES AND AUTO/BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVES.- Christa Hämmerle; 'And for whom? And the thanks?': Disputed Histories of the Swiss Red Cross-Nurse Maria Pöll-Naepflin (1894-1972).- Ruth Nattermann; Professionalization, Feminism, and Humanitarianism in Times of War: Rosa Genoni (1867-1957),'an international life according to human dignity'.- Susan Meryem Rosita Kalayci; On Women's Stories of Sexual Violence and Caregiving in the Armenian Genocide and After.- Heidrun Zettelbauer; Comment.- PART IV - FIELDS OF CARE, CARE GIVERS, AND CARE RECEIVERS.- Viktoria Wind; Military Masculinity and In/Vulnerability in the k.u.k. Military Medical Service During the First World War.- Louise Earnshaw; Psychological Borders and Humanitarian Aid: Mental Health Care Among Refugees and Returning Prisoners of War in Austria During the Greater War.- Alexia Moncrieff; Conflict, Faith and Vulnerability: The Troubles of anAustralian Army Doctor in the First World War.- Jessica Meyer; Comment.- PART V - AFTERMATHS AND TRANSITIONS.- Alison S. Fell; Interwar Networks of Care: The Afterlives of First World War Nurses.- Holly Furneaux; Remembering Christmas 1914: Fraternisation, Gender, and Race.- Edita Gzoyan; Women as Victims and Rescuers: The Agony and Agency of Women During the Armenian Genocide.- Susan Grayzel; Comment.
About the author
Ingrid Sharp is Professor of German Cultural and Gender History at the University of Leeds, UK.
Heidrun Zettelbauer is Professor of Cultural and Gender History at the University of Graz, Austria.
Summary
This book examines the gendered dimensions of vulnerability, care, and humanitarianism before, during and after the First World War. It explores how war disrupts societal structures, transforms care relationships, and reinforces or challenges gendered hierarchies. It analyses how wartime welfare and care work—carried out by individuals, charities, and state institutions—reflected power structures, formed identities and influenced post-war political activism. This book uses interdisciplinary approaches and creates conversations across national and disciplinary borders, covering Western, Central and Eastern Europe. Topics include auto/biographical studies of care-givers, showing how their wartime experiences fed into their post-war identities and how they shaped understandings and structures of care work. By foregrounding care and welfare as central to wartime experiences, it provides new insights into the long-term social and political impacts of war, offering historical perspectives relevant to contemporary global conflicts and crises. This book therefore identifies emerging questions and directions within First World War Gender Studies, as well as reflecting on continuities and changes within contemporary theories of how gender is bound up with militarism, warfare, and conflict resolution.
