Embracing Arms

Helena Goscilo is Professor of Slavic and Chair of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures at the Ohio State University, Columbus. Yana Hashamova is Professor of Slavic and Chair of the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University.

Discursive practices during war polarize and politicize gender: they normally require men to fulfill a single, overriding task--destroy the enemy--but impose a series of often contradictory expectations on women. The essays in the book establish links between political ideology, history, psychology, cultural studies, cinema, literature, and gender studies and addresses questions such as-- what is the role of women in war or military conflicts beyond the well-studied victimization? Can the often contradictory expectations of women and their traditional roles be (re)thought and (re)constructed? How do cultural representations of women during war times reveal conflicting desires and poke holes in the ideological apparatus of the state and society?

Acknowledgements Introduction I. WORLD WAR II Film and Television: El'bieta Ostrowska: Invisible Deaths: Polish Cinema's Representation of Women in World War II; Alexander Prokhorov: She Defends His Motherland: The Myth of Mother Russia in Soviet Maternal Melodrama of the 1940s; Tatiana Mikhailova and Mark Lipovetsky: The Subjectivity of a Female War Veteran in Larisa Shepit'ko's Wings; Elena Prokhorova: Gender(ed) Games: Romance, Slapstick, and Ideology in the Polish Television Series Four Tank Men and a Dog; Literature, graphics, song: Irina Sandomirskaja; Rage, Body, and Power Talk in the City of Hunger: the Politics of Womanliness in Lidia Ginzburg's Notes from the Siege of Leningrad; Helena Goscilo: Graphic Womanhood under Fire; Robert Rothstein: Songs of Women Warriors and Women Who Waited. II. RECENT WARS Trina Mamoon: "Black Widows": Women as Political Combatants in the Chechen Conflict; Yana Hashamova: War Rape: (Re)defining Motherhood, Fatherhood, and Nationhood; Jessica Wienhold-Brokish: Dubravka Ugresia's War Museum: Approaching the "Point of Pain" List of Contributors