| Date: | November 14, 2019 |
| Time: | 5:00 - 6:30 PM |
| Venue: | New Classroom Building (Virginia Tech) |
| Description: |
The Virginia Tech Department of History presents "Donuts and Dancing: Entertaining America's Wartime Military", a lecture by Dr. Kara Dixon Vuic as part of Veterans Week on Thursday, November 14, 2019 in Room 203 inside the New Classroom Building on the campus of Virginia Tech. Beginning in World War I, the U.S. military sent good girls from home to boost the morale and comfort the spirits of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. On the surface, these young women epitomized an idealized home front for which the men fought and hoped to return. Yet, as this talk will reveal, USO girls, YMCA Lassies, and Red Cross Donut Dollies struggled mightily to serve donuts and soothe souls, to balance their wholesome image with the expectations of lonely men far from home. Kara Dixon Vuic is the LCpl. Benjamin W. Schmidt Professor of War, Conflict, and Society in Twentieth-Century America at Texas Christian University and the author of the newly released "The Girls Next Door: Bringing the Home Front to the Front Lines" (Harvard University Press, 2019). She is also the author of "Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), editor of The Routledge Handbook on Gender, War, and the U.S. Military (2017), and co-editor (with Richard Fogarty) of the University of Nebraska Press’s book series “Studies in War, Society, and the Military.” She is currently co-editing a collection “Managing Sex in the U.S. Military” with Beth Bailey, Alesha Doan, and Shannon Portillo and working on a new book called “Drafting Women.” Admission is free and all are welcome. To view the event flyer, visit: https://i.imgur.com/48zlaKw.jpg. For more information on the event, visit: https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2019/11/clahs-veterans-day-transcribathon.html. |