45th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) 2104 (Web)

Time: April 3-6, 2014
Veneu: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Deadline: September 30, 2013

World War I and World War II saw the large-scale entry of female nurses into the gendered hierarchy of the military. These nurses are now viewed as courageous, but at the time the public viewed nursing as an “unsuitable” and “suspect” profession for young, unmarried women because it involved “demeaning physical labor”; required mixing of sexes, races, and nationalities; and involved care for individuals suffering from “taboo illnesses” such as venereal disease (Monohan and Neidel-Greenlee 2003: 9-10). All of these dynamics were amplified during wartime. In addition, war nurses were exposed to violence, personal danger, and death, and were also subject to sexual abuse by their own military servicemen. Hardly anyone asked war nurses what they had been through until the late twentieth century; official … read more (Website)