Daniela Baroffio-Bota
Sarah Banet-Weiser, Chair
ABSTRACT: The Female Soldier Mediating Promises and Problematics of Femininity, War, and the Nation
The traditional American war story is a story about men. It is a story about brave men who leave their home to protect the nation and its women and children. It is certainly not a story about the women who have joined these men on the frontlines and also risked their lives to protect the homeland. While women’s experience with war and military interventions has historically been marginalized, I argue that it no longer makes sense to uphold this marginalization. Women are increasingly joining the ranks and debates about women and war shape much of our current news coverage of military interventions.
In the contemporary context of the War on Terror the figure of the female soldier needs to be theoretically approached not as a site for the reaffirmation of patriarchal narratives such as the traditional war story, but rather as a productive moment for the articulation of a feminist critique of patriarchal systems of meaning and institutions such as the United States military. This dissertation is a feminist examination of contemporary media representations of US female soldiers. Drawing from cultural theories of identity and nationalism, the central argument in this dissertation is that while the visibly contentious discourses set in motion by the figure of the female soldier serve to reaffirm the heterosexual masculinity of the military, the media trope of the female soldier serves also as a critical intervention in this discursive field.