American Girl Goes to War

LIZ CLARKE is an assistant professor in communication, popular culture and film at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. She has published articles in Camera Obscura and Feminist Media Histories, as well as papers in edited anthologies New Perspectives on the War Film and Martial Culture, Silver Screen: War Movies and the Construction of American Identity.

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction1 American Girls and National Identity2 Fighting Femininity on Home Soil in Civil War Films, 1908–19163 The American Revolution and Other Wars4 Featuring Preparedness and Peace: America and the European War, Part I5 From Serial Queens to Patriotic Heroines: America and the European War, Part II6 The American Girl and Wartime PatriotismConclusionAppendix 1: Civil War Films, 1908–1916Appendix 2: World War I Films, 1914–1919Additional FilmographyAcknowledgmentsNotesSelected BibliographyIndex

New Books Network: New Books in Women's History interview with Liz Clarke— New Books Network: New Books in Women's History"Brock prof's new book explores women, war and silent film," by Amanda Bishop— The Brock News"This exciting, well-researched work crosses multidisciplinary boundaries and will be of value to those interested in cinema, gender studies, propaganda, history, and political science. Recommended for academic libraries."— Library Journal"Documenting the many heroic women who populated war films of this era, Liz Clarke shows the strength and vitality of female characters onscreen, while remaining attentive to the key role that white femininity played in narratives of American national identity during this period. Framing her analysis within a rich cultural context, Clarke show how essential cinema was to evolving ideas about both nationhood and femininity in the first decades of the twentieth century."— Shelley Stamp, author of Movie-Struck Girls and Lois Weber in Early Hollywood