Synopses & Reviews
This is a lively collection of essays on the cultures of nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain. Topics range from prostitution and slavery to the effect of war on fashion magazine reporting to inter-racial marriage in the postwar years. Particular areas of focus include the Second World War, its legacies and the reactions to postwar decolonization.
Review
"This elegant volume not only celebrates one of the most influential social historians of our time, but offers a compelling and up to date historiographical treatment of the most important trends in British history over the last generation."--Nicoletta F. Gullace, University of New Hampshire
About the Author
PHILIPPA LEVINE teaches history at the University of Southern California. She has published most recently on sexuality and gender in the British Empire and is currently at work on a study of evolution and eugenics.
SUSAN R. GRAYZEL teaches history at the University of Mississippi. She is author of Womens Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (1999), winner of the 2000 British Council Prize, and Women and First World War (2002). Her current work focuses on gender and warfare from 1914-1945.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Why Gender, Labour, War and Empire?--P.Levine and S.R.Grayzel
PART I: LABOUR, SEX AND RACE: THE PROBLEMS OF MODERNITY
Remaking the British Working Class: Sonya Rose and Feminist History--D.Dworkin
In Search of Free Labour: Trinidad and the Abolition of the British Slave Trade--J.Epstein
Race and the Regulation of Prostitution: Comparing Public Health in the US and Greater Britain--P.Levine
The Colonial Actress: Empire, Modernity and the Exotic in Twentieth-Century London--A.Woollacott
PART II: GENDER, IDENTITY, AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR
British Feminism in the Second World War--H.L.Smith
"Magazines are essentially about the here and now. And this was wartime: British Vogue's Responses to WWII--B.E.Conekin
Fighting for the Idea of Home Life: Mrs Miniver and Anglo-American 181 Representations of Domestic Morale--S.R.Grayzel
Film and the Popular Memory of the Second World War in Britain 1950-1959; P.Summerfield
PART III: GENDER, RACE, AND THE AFTERMATH OF WAR AND EMPIRE
Men of the Royal Air Force, the Cultural Memory of the Second World War and the Twilight of the British Empire--M.Francis
Disturbing the Peoples Peace: Patriotism and Respectable Racism in British Responses to Rhodesian Independence--A.Ritscherle
Would You Let Your Daughter Marry a Negro?: Race and Sex in 1950s Britain--E.Buettner
How is the National Past Imagined? National Sentimentality, True Feeling, and the Heritage Film, 1980-1995--G.Eley
Afterword--L.L.Frader