Women Warrior Memorials and Issues of Gender in Contemporary American Public Art Erika Doss Published Online: 23 Oct 2012

Home , War memorials (Aisne)

This article was downloaded by: [University of Notre Dame] On: 18 September 2013, At: 06:50 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Public Art Dialogue Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpad20 Women Warrior Memorials and Issues of Gender in Contemporary American Public Art Erika Doss Published online: 23 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Erika Doss (2012) Women Warrior Memorials and Issues of Gender in Contemporary American Public Art, Public Art Dialogue, 2:2, 190-214, DOI: 10.1080/21502552.2012.717761 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21502552.2012.717761

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions Public Art Dialogue, Vol. 2, Issue 2, September 2012, 190–214

WOMEN WARRIOR MEMORIALS AND ISSUES OF GENDER IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PUBLIC ART

Erika Doss

In recent decades, a signiﬁcant number of memorials honoring women soldiers have been built in America. These include national projects such as the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, dedicated in Washington, D.C. in 1993, and the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, which opened in Arlington National Cemetery in 1997, and various state and local memorials erected in Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma (Figure 1). Many are aligned with a major cultural shift in American memorial culture toward a more democratic and inclusive sensibility, one that seeks to represent and even reckon with absent, and ignored, subjects in the national narrative. Like the African Burial Ground National Monument, dedicated in New York City in 2007, and the Slave Labor Commemorative Marker, unveiled in Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center in February 2012, memorials to women soldiers may be seen on similarly revisionist terms: as public art projects that challenge a longstanding focus on a heroic and mostly white male dominated national history. Yet close attention to these “women warrior” memorials, as many are increasingly called, reveals that gender issues remain central not only to the experiences of women in the U.S. military but to how they are remembered and commemorated. While these memorials recognize and pay tribute to women in the

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 military, they elide its dominating masculinity and simultaneously reinforce contemporary American infatuation with all things war. Women—real women, not symbolic and allegorical ﬁgures—are practically invisible in American memorial culture. None of the several dozen memorials managed by the National Park Service (NPS), a group of iconic totems that range from national touchstones like the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the recently dedicated Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial located on “the mall” in Washington, D.C., to the Wright Brothers National Memorial in North Carolina and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, focus speciﬁcally on women. Likewise, of the 5,193 public outdoor sculptures of individuals recorded in the Smithsonian

Public Art Dialogue ISSN 2150-2552 print/ISSN 2150-2560 online q 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21502552.2012.717761 http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals Figure 1. Glenna Goodacre. Vietnam Women’s Memorial. National Mall, Washington, D.C. 1993. Bronze. Visitors gather around the memorial as part of Veterans Day observances, November 11, 2011. The sculpture in the round features four ﬁgures, this side showing a female military nurse. Photo by Army Staff Sgt. Michael J. Carden. Courtesy U.S. Department of Defense.

American Art Museum’s Art Inventories Catalogue, only 394 (less than 8%) represent women.1 And in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, where each state is allowed to pay tribute to its notable citizens with two statues each, fewer than 10% are dedicated to women. In 2009, Alabama added a statue of Helen Keller, although not as a suffragist, peace activist, and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner but as a 7-year old child holding her hand under a water pump (an image lifted from a scene in the 1962 movie The Miracle Worker).

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 In 2011, the Maryland General Assembly rejected citizen petitions to replace a statue of John Hanson, a merchant slaveholder who became President of the Continental Congress in 1781, with a statue of Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad heroine who led hundreds of slaves to freedom during the Civil War. As of 2012, statues of two white men represent Maryland: plantation owner Charles Carroll, one of the colony’s largest slaveholders, and Hanson. This limited representation of women in American history is occasionally disrupted. In 1980, for example, the NPS dedicated the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York, where the ﬁrst convention on female suffrage was held in 1848. In 2000, the NPS established the Rosie the Riveter/ World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, which 191 pays tribute to female wartime industrial workers across America and includes a memorial replicating the frames of the Liberty cargo ships they produced at Kaiser Shipyard No. 2 in Richmond (Figure 2). Within the abstracted sculptural frame of the Rosie the Riveter memorial are “image ladders” that recall the narrow ladders that workers used to climb from one ﬂoor to the next in the ships, and which display photo-etched pictures, letters, blueprints, and other materials that remember their participation in the wartime defense industry. At the height of the war, more than 25% of Kaiser Shipyards’ 90,000 workers were women, many of them African American.2 Their recognition a half-century later was largely prompted by a younger generation of women, including their daughters, who insisted that their contributions to the U.S. war effort be commemorated. In fact, American women have historically played leading roles in national war memory. After the Civil War, groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Daughters of Union Veterans organized the memorials and monuments that were erected in the south and in the north.3 After World War I, American Gold Star Mothers orchestrated the recovery and return of the bodies of U.S. soldier dead to U.S. soil, and raised funds for the establishment of various Gold Star cemeteries and honor courts across the nation.4 In 2011, a bill to establish a Gold Star Mothers National Monument was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. One design for the proposed memorial, to be located in the Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

Figure 2. Susan Schwartzenberg and Cheryl Barton. Rosie the Riveter Memorial. Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park. Richmond, California. 2000. Mixed media. Photo by the author.

192 nation’s capital, features a life-size bronze statue of a grief-struck mother, dressed in clothing dating to the 1940s, “grasping the dreaded Western Union telegram in her hand ...looking off into distant, but cherished memories of her warrior son” (Figure 3).5 Over the past few decades, growing numbers of female veterans (1.7 million in 2010) have spearheaded drives to erect memorials to America’s women warriors. Beginning in 1973, U.S. women were permitted to join men in the nation’s all- volunteer military. As of 2012, 205,000 women serve on active duty, comprising about 15% of America’s armed forces, and the U.S. military is the nation’s largest employer of women. Increasing numbers of women are joining the military today, and entering the nation’s military academies. Of the 2.4 million soldiers deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq since October 2001, 280,000 have been female; as of April 2012, 139 U.S. women soldiers had been killed and more than 800 wounded.6 While they are ofﬁcially barred from serving in infantry, combat, and special forces units, in early 2012 the Pentagon unveiled plans to allow women to serve at battalion levels and in military positions that mirror the work many already perform. This segues with popular opinion: polls conducted in 2011 showed that 73% of Americans believe women should be allowed to serve in ground units that engage in close combat.7 As women soldiers have become increasingly visible in America’s armed forces, so too have women soldier memorials. The ﬁrst U.S. monument to a woman in service uniform was actually dedicated in downtown New Orleans in 1943 (Figure 4). Commissioned by a local recruiter to encourage women to join the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve, a unit of active duty service women whose various military assignments helped accommodate male soldiers in combat, the life-size cast concrete statue featured “Molly Marine” holding a pair of binoculars in one hand and a task book in the other, neatly attired in a visored bell-crowned hat, tailored jacket, long-sleeved khaki shirt, four-in-hand necktie, straight skirt, and sensible shoes. The words “Free a Marine to Fight” were inscribed on the pedestal, alluding to the gendered distinctions between the non-combat jobs that

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 female Marines held during World War II as clerk typists, radio operators, map makers, and parachute riggers, and those that male Marines were assigned. In 1999, a bronze replica of the “Molly Marine” statue was dedicated at Parris Island in South Carolina, where enlisted women undergo Marine Corps training today, and in 2000 a second reproduction was erected at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, where female ofﬁcers train. Designed by Mexican-American sculptor Enrique Alferez, who studied with Lorado Taft at the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-1920s and was the director of the New Orleans Works Progress Administration during the 1930s, the memorial depicts the female Marine in terms of tailored femininity: as a respectable Lady Marine.8 Combating social stereotypes of women soldiers as either mannish

193 Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

Figure 3. Andrew Chernak. New England Gold Star Mothers Memorial. Manchester, New Hampshire. 2006. Bronze. Dedicated in 2011 in New Hampshire, Chernak’s statue of a grieving mother is intended as the centerpiece of a proposed Gold Star Mothers National Monument in Washington, D.C. Photo by Andrew Chernak.

194 Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

Figure 4. Enrique Alferez. Molly Marine. New Orleans. 1943. Cast concrete fortified with marble and granite chips. Restored several times, the statue has been replicated twice in bronze: in 1999, at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina, and in 2000, at Quantico Marine Corps Base, Virginia. Photo by Paul Lowry. Courtesy Creative Commons. 195 lesbians or sexually promiscuous prostitutes, U.S. servicewomen during World War II were represented in uniform, in specific military regulations, in the popular media, and in this statue on “chaste and asexual” terms: as explicitly feminine and eminently respectable soldiers. Women who yearned to serve their country by joining one of several female service units that were organized during the war were depicted as wholesome, decent, hardworking girls from good family backgrounds.9 Further, while they were individuals, they were nameless: components of a larger American military body. Indeed, Alferez reportedly based Molly on four different female Marines based in New Orleans, and on one professional model (his girlfriend, Judy Mosgrove), combining their features to produce the era’s ideal image of the upstanding woman soldier.10 As one Marine officer remarked at the dedication ceremonies for the statue held at Quantico in 2000: “Molly Marine represents the countless contributions female Marines have made to the Corps. She has become a symbol of esprit de corps for all women Marines.”11 Many contemporary women’s service memorials replicate Molly Marine’s model of the respectable lady soldier. Rhode Island’s Women Veterans Memorial, designed by sculptor Mimi Sammis and dedicated in the state’s Veterans Cemetery in Exeter in 2002, features a life-size bronze of a stiffly posed female soldier in parade dress uniform, standing on top of a globe of the earth (a map of North America is projected toward the viewer standing directly in front of the statue) and clutching an American flag. Likewise, the Veteran’s War Memorial of Texas, an ongoing multi-acre project located in McAllen that was started in the late 1980s, features life-size colored bronze statues of female WAC (Women Army Corps), WAVE (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services), and Marines, each sharply dressed in World War II era service uniforms and all smartly saluting the male figure represented in another bronze statue titled The Warrior: a grenade throwing infantryman representing the 3,440 Medal of Honor recipients of the U.S. Armed Forces. Recently dedicated women’s service memorials in Kentucky and Illinois

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 similarly feature single female soldiers, although each updates their sculpted representation to include figures of contemporary women warriors. A memorial commissioned by the Illinois Daughters of the American Revolution and unveiled in Mount Vernon, for example, features the likeness of National Guard Major Tammy Duckworth, who while piloting a Blackhawk helicopter in Iraq in 2004 was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and suffered the loss of both legs and extensive damage to her right arm. “I am proud that America now finally realizes that her daughters are just as capable of fighting for liberty and freedom as her sons,” Duckworth declared at the memorial’s dedication ceremony, adding: “We are stronger as a nation when all of us participate, when it’s not just men or women, or blacks or whites, when all of us participate together.”12

196 Duckworth’s remarks suggest how military membership, or participation, is viewed today as a central tenet of American national identity. As historian Andrew Bacevich observes, Americans have elevated “the soldier to the status of national icon, the apotheosis of all that is great and good about contemporary America.”13 While public confidence in democratic politics, Congress, the President, and various institutions including education, healthcare, and religion has steadily diminished in recent decades, public support for America’s armed forces has steadily increased, especially since 9/11. Soldiers are invited to the front of the line when passing through airport security and are cheered in parades. Merchandise branded with the slogan “Support Our Troops” is plentiful. Despite the economic downturn of the early twenty-first century, the U.S. spent $698 billion on the military in 2010, an 81% increase since 2001, six times more than defense spending in China, and more, in fact, than defense spending in the entire rest of the world combined.14 “To a degree without precedent in U.S. history,” Bacevich remarks, “Americans have come to define the nation’s strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness, military action, and the fostering of (or nostalgia for) military ideals.”15 Escalating numbers of war memorials—the largest body of memorials being made in America today—represent the nation’s generally unquestioned faith in militarism and perpetuate its primary identity as a global military presence and power. Such understandings of militaristic purpose hinge, however, on the inclusion of all Americans in a shared ethos of “we are all warriors.” Accordingly, over the past few decades increasing numbers of war memorials have been dedicated to larger and larger pools of military veterans, and installed in public spaces where they may best serve as tools of persuasion: encouraging all Americans to believe in themselves as warriors, and viewing their nation as a warrior nation. The African American Civil War Memorial, for example, was dedicated in Washington, D.C. in 1998 near the U Street Metro Station and the African American Civil War Museum.16 The American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial consists of a two-acre site near the United States Botanic Garden on the

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 national mall, and is expected to be dedicated in late 2013. The women warrior memorials discussed in this article follow suit. They range in style and size. The Arizona Women Veterans’ Memorial, for example, located on the grounds of the National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix, consists of a rough-hewn granite block to which ﬁve bronze-reliefs depicting the faces of women soldiers in various branches of the armed services have been attached (Figure 5). Women veterans in Minnesota are honored with a simple memorial plaque at the state capitol. Broken Arrow, Oklahoma’s 33-foot long Women’s War Memorial features a black granite wall engraved with text panels discussing military women from the Revolutionary War to the present. While included within a large multi-acre Veteran’s Park dedicated to all of

197 Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

Figure 5. Arizona Women Veterans’ Memorial/”Women Veterans Serving Together—Past, Present, Future.” National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona. 1996. Pink granite, bronze. A nearby plaque is inscribed with a poem titled “Invisible Soldier” by Sarge Linticum. Photo courtesy Tsegi Mike and Desert Viking.

198 Oklahoma’s military personnel, Broken Arrow’s Women’s War Memorial challenges American memorial culture’s traditionally male focus by historically recovering the estimated two million women who have participated in the military since the nation’s beginnings, and by depicting them as compelling and heroic figures. On the one hand, women soldier memorials, like women soldiers, might seem to complicate traditional assumptions about gender roles and militarism while expanding the subjectivity of U.S. national citizenship. Yet none of these women soldier memorials effectively reckon with the dominant masculinity of America’s armed forces, or consider the particularly gendered terms by which women are actually “included” in the U.S. military. Inclusion of women in the cadet ranks of the U.S. Air Force Academy, for example, where women were first admitted in 1976, was initially met with bitter opposition from male cadets and Air Force alumni. This is the military service academy, after all, where new cadets from 1965–2003 were greeted by the words “Bring Me Men” peering down on them from the “Warrior Ramp” where they lined up for in-processing on their first day of basic training (Figure 6). As John Lindell and Joel Sanders explain, the architecture of the U.S. Air Force Academy, located outside of Colorado Springs and designed by the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in the mid-1950s, represents the epitome of a modern postwar design sensibility aligned with the production of specifically masculine subjects. The entire campus is tightly gridded, regimented, ordered, and contained. Stone pavers lining “the Terrazzo,” for example, the large square plaza behind the “Bring Me Men” ramp, were laid in a grid of 1’-9” to correspond to the average shoulder width of a young male cadet.17 The inclusion, or intrusion, of female cadets in 1976 was seen to upset this careful construction of the military masculine (Figure 7). In response, the class of 1979, the last all-male class of cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy, had the motto “Omnes Viri” inscribed on their class rings, which translated as “All Male.” At their graduation ceremonies, they displayed a large banner reading “LCWB.” If “officially” claimed as an acronym for “Loyalty,

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 Courage, Wisdom, Bravery,” unofﬁcially it was widely understood as an acronym for “Last Class with Balls” or “Last Class Without Bitches.” Today, some members of the class of 1979 continue to display the “LCWB” acronym at class reunions, and wear hats inscribed with “LCWB” when they visit the Academy for alumni events.18 This rampant culture of male superiority and misogyny at the U.S. Air Force Academy is manifest in other ways, too, most reprehensibly in terms of rape and sexual assault. Incidents of sex crimes skyrocketed at the Academy in 1994 and again in 2003.19 A Defense Department survey conducted in May 2003 reported that nearly 12% of women who graduated from the Academy that year “were the victims of rape or attempted rape in their four years at the academy,” with the “vast majority never reporting the incidents to the authorities” for fear of reprisal.

199 Figure 6. “Bring Me Men” motto inscribed on the “Warrior Ramp” overlooking “the Terrazzo” at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Colorado Springs, Colorado. 1990. The motto was originally inscribed in 1965 and removed on March 29, 2003. Photo courtesy U.S. Air Force Academy.

“Victims of rape who came forward,” a story in the New York Times explained, “were routinely punished for minor infractions while their attackers escaped judgment, prompting most victims to remain silent.”20 It was only after the Academy’s high rate of sexual assault received widespread media coverage, and the Academy itself publicly admitted that it had a sexual misconduct crisis that mandated immediate and signiﬁcant policy reform and

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 enforcement, that the motto “Bring Me Men” inscribed on the “Warrior Ramp” was removed in 2003. Interestingly, the motto itself had only been placed on the ramp in 1965, after a huge cheating scandal forced 109 cadets (including 44 ﬁrst- year cadets) to resign or be expelled. Academy leadership had hoped that Air Force cadets would be inspired by the virtuous, and patriotic, sentiments of nineteenth- century poet Samuel Walter Foss, whose 1894 piece “The Coming American” features these lines: “Bring me men to match my mountains; Bring me men to match my plains, Men with empires in their purpose, And new eras in their brains.” Whether or not the words “Bring Me Men” actually guided Academy cadets along the path to imperial goodness, they certainly helped construct and validate 200 Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

Figure 7. Julie Summers, U.S. Air Force Academy Class of 1980, at the “Bring Me Men” ramp during Basic Cadet Training In-Processing, June 1976. Colorado Springs, Colorado. Photo courtesy U.S. Air Force Academy.

201 the school’s all-male subjects’ sense of masculine privilege. Even after women were admitted to the U.S. Air Force Academy, the motto was retained on the ramp for almost two decades: testament to the U.S. military’s aggressively masculine culture and the fact that irrespective of gender, cadets are trained and expected to act like “men.” For signiﬁcant numbers of men who felt that women did not belong at the U.S. Air Force Academy in the ﬁrst place, “Bring Me Men” came to represent a time “before” women: a nostalgic “better” time. They vented their resentment about the motto’s removal in 2003 in student newspapers and online sites, offering suggestions for replacement slogans ranging from “Bring Me Warriors” to “Get in the kitchen and bring me a sandwich, bitch.”21 They vented their resentment about the presence of women in their formerly all-male military space through repeated incidents of sexual assault. Female cadets, however much they were trained to be like “men,” could never actually “be” men, and had no recourse: especially in an institution that tolerated the sexual abuse of women for decades and perpetuated a culture of misogyny with the commanding decree “Bring Me Men.” Finally, in March 2004, the Academy’s “Warrior Ramp” was re-inscribed with gender-neutral words from the Air Force Academy’s Code of Honor: “Integrity First, Service Before Self, Excellence in All We Do” (Figure 8). The ramp itself was also re-named the “Core Values Ramp.” Still, the longstanding authority of “Bring Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

Figure 8. First-year cadets on In-Processing day, June 2008, at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs. The “Core Values Ramp,” inscribed with the motto “Integrity First, Service Before Self, Excellence in All We Do,” is seen in the background. Photo courtesy U.S. Air Force Academy.

202 Me Men,” and the continuing heinous sexual assault of female soldiers—current statistics show that one in three women soldiers may be raped and over 70% are sexually assaulted—suggests the impossibility of including women in the U.S. military without female subjugation. Consider the ad campaign that the Marine Corps mounted in 2008, first broadcast on American Idol: “There are no female Marines. Only Marines.”22 If such recruiting pitched equity in the Corps, it also emphasized that to be a Marine, women need to be men: women as women, put simply, are inferior and lesser. It is hardly surprising, then, that in 2011 the Pentagon reported that incidents of sexual assault had increased at all three of the nation’s military academies (West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs) from the previous year. Or that in January 2012, the Pentagon reported, violent sex crimes in the military had increased 64% since 2006, and women soldiers accounted for 95% of sex crime victims.23 As New York Attorney Colleen Dalton observes, “Sexual misconduct pervades all branches of the Armed Services where military power structures inevitably create an oppressed class subject to the authority of another.”24 While the motto “Bring Me Men” was removed, male subjectivity still rules at the U.S. Air Force Academy, a place where every campus building is “named after a prominent male air power pioneer” and the Cadet Honor Court is dotted with busts and statues dedicated to a profusion of all-male Air Force pilots and generals.25 There is a single memorial to women soldiers: to the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of World War II, who flew planes from factories to military bases and thus enabled male pilots to concentrate on combat missions (Figure 9). Designed by former WASP Dot Swain Lewis, the bronze statue of a female pilot trainee was dedicated in the Cadet Honor Court in 1997. But inscribed on a plaque on the rear of the memorial’s pedestal are these patronizing words from U.S. Air Force General Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold, delivered shortly before he disbanded the women’s military service unit in late 1944: “I salute ...all WASPs. You have been pioneers in a new field of wartime service. You ...have shown you can fly wingtip to wingtip with your brothers.”26

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 Today’s women warrior memorials seemingly challenge a predominantly male military culture that has yet to accept American women soldiers as equals, or even recognize that it has a gender problem. But controversy often ensues over how women soldiers are depicted, particularly if they are represented on allegorical terms. This is the case with the New York State Women’s Veterans Memorial, which is showcased by a nine-foot bronze statue of Lady Liberty clad in a form-fitting gown, holding aloft the flag of the state of New York in her right arm and stomping on the crown of England (a symbol seen on the state’s flag and seal) with her sandal-clad feet. Designed by Hy Rosen, who worked for five decades as an editorial cartoonist for the Albany Times Union, the $300,000 memorial was dedicated in 1998 to “the Women of New York for their War Time Military Service

203 Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

Figure 9. Dot Swain Lewis. Women Airforce Service Pilots Monument. 1997. Bronze. Cadet Honor Court, U.S. Air Force Academy. Colorado Springs, Colorado. Photo by Mary Ellen Konieczny.

204 in the Defense of this Nation” and is located on the grounds of the state capitol. Underneath the memorial’s main figure, the words “Pride,” “Courage,” and “Honor” are inscribed on a granite plinth; flanking her are two panels with smaller cast bronze bas-relief sculptures representing women soldiers past and present, from the Revolutionary War to the Gulf War. Although intended to honor the state’s female military veterans, Rosen apparently understood the commission differently and centered it with a symbolic representation of Lady Liberty—not an American woman soldier. At one point, he suggested that his star attraction bare one breast, but the 15-member memorial committee, consisting of women veterans and state officials, vetoed that idea. Older generations of women veterans were especially incensed by Rosen’s casual, and in their opinion rather callous, treatment of their military service. Recalling her own 1950s military uniform of a simple skirt, dress shirt, and tie, an outfit of tailored femininity embodied in the Molly Marine statues and in Rhode Island’s Women Veterans Memorial, former WAC Dolores Reed, who served in Korea in the 1950s, said Rosen’s statue looked “like a fan dancer” and dubbed her “General Godiva.” “It’s insulting,” Reed added. “We were not there to service the servicemen and that’s what that statue represents.”27 A letter writing campaign organized by female veterans asking New York governor George Pataki to scrap the memorial was ignored. In June 2004, state Senator Nancy Larraine Hoffman reignited the controversy when she observed that Rosen’s statue looked “like an ad for Victoria’s Secret and does a grave disservice to women who have served in past wars and those women who are risking their lives today.” Hoffman had just returned from ceremonies held in the New York State Senate where Margaret Bandy, a Marine Corps veteran of World War II, was honored as a “Woman of Distinction.” Bandy seconded Hoffman, remarking: “A lady draped in a lovely chiffon scarf does not represent military women.”28 Debates over how women soldiers should be represented in American war memorials, and hence what meaning they have in terms of American war memory, relate to differences among older and younger generations regarding issues of

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 gender and the dramatically expanded roles that women hold in the U.S. military today. Older generations of women soldiers expect to be honorably recognized and remembered for their service to the nation, and rightfully so in a democratic memorial culture that has expanded to extend such rights to many other groups and causes in the past few decades. Yet the representational terms by which they want to be remembered, especially those of tailored femininity and hence respectability, are often at odds with the “real” military experiences of today’s women soldiers. Similar sorts of debates raged for thirteen years, from 1998 to 2011, over an 8- foot bronze statue of a woman soldier commissioned for inclusion in the West Virginia Veterans Memorial (Figure 10). Installed on state capitol grounds in Charleston, the $3.8 million dollar monument (dedicated in 1995) features

205 Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

Figure 10. Joseph Mullins. West Virginia Female Veterans Memorial. 2011. West Virginia Veterans Memorial, Charleston, West Virginia. Photo courtesy Joe Mullins.

206 similarly over-sized statues of male soldiers, each representing one of four service branches from four twentieth-century wars: World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Sculptor Joe Mullins, who was selected to design the memorial in 1987, was asked in 1998 by State Senator Donna Boley to add a statue that paid tribute to the state’s women veterans. The commission was organized and approved by West Virginia’s Division of Culture and History, which authorized Mullins to “depict a modern female soldier” comparable in uniform and pose to the four male soldiers. “This particular piece,” Mullins explained in 2007, “is designed to go with and compliment the service men that are up there. She is treated exactly the same way they are.” Explaining, “the Vietnam era guy is in a flak jacket with no shirt on,” Mullins emphasized that each male soldier was depicted in “battledress,” not parade dress.29 Mullins’s woman warrior is similarly outfitted in today’s standard military working uniform: t-shirt, fatigues, field hat, a field belt holding several pouches including one for a gas mask, and combat boots; she also grasps a flagpole. The design was conceived in the late 1990s. “If I were to sculpt her today,” Mullins observed in 2010, “I would have her carrying a firearm,” in keeping with the frontline roles that many American women soldiers have held recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. The statue was commissioned for a space about 50-feet from the Veterans Memorial, perched on a pedestal tall enough, Mullins remarks, so that the female soldier “can look eyeball to eyeball with the four men” in the monumental grouping across from her.30 However, when Mullins showed a maquette of his statue to a group of older women veterans who dropped by to visit his studio in Charleston in 2003, such aspirations of gender equity in today’s U.S. military were immediately challenged. The group was apparently “shocked” by Mullins’s figure, which they said was “too masculine” and “should be wearing a skirt.”31 Perhaps they found his representation of a woman warrior too close to the one depicted in the controversial 1997 movie G.I. Jane, in which Demi Moore plays the first woman to be selected for Navy Seals training and undergoes an incredibly punishing course of physical abuse as she also

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 mouths gender-bending and “anatomically impossible” epithets.32 Perhaps they were unnerved by the figure’s resemblance to the real-life women soldiers dying in the war on terror, such as Specialist Lori Ann Piestewa, the first woman soldier killed in the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Or perhaps Mullins’s maquette too closely reminded them of other images of women soldiers, like the photographs of Private First Class Lynndie England, who grew up in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, whose participation in the torture and abuse of prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib Prison first came to widespread public attention in April 2004. Challenging the authority of the state’s Division of History and Culture, the disgruntled group of older women veterans convened a second committee to review the original public art commission and demanded that Mullins rework his

207 memorial design into something that looked “more like a lady” instead of a statue that “just looks like another male.” Christie Utt, the Air Force veteran who chaired the Veteran Affairs committee, remarked that Mullins’s statue was “just not what West Virginia veterans think of when they think of women in the military.” While recognizing the conflicted dimensions of gendered representation, Utt speculated that a supposedly gender-neutral space like “a garden” might be the best kind of memorial to the state’s female vets.33 When the website Military.com posted the story of the controversy over this memorial to West Virginia’s women soldiers and asked for feedback, one female Marine responded: “Are you freaking kidding me? Who are these people that want a modern-day military woman’s statue in a cute little skirt?” Likewise, a female Marine Corps officer wrote: “We are warriors and we don’t fight in skirts and pumps. Give that statue a tight bun/braid, dirty cami trousers, callused hands, and a deep stare, for those are my sisters.”34 In 2005, certain state officials tried to force Mullins to withdraw his commissioned and approved design for a modern female soldier statue, for which he had already been paid $50,000. “The statue that Mr. Mullins created is dead,” declared State Division of Veteran Affairs Director Larry Linch at a widely publicized press conference.35 Mullins held his ground, citing his legally binding contract and arguing that a revised statue of a lady soldier in a skirt was inconsistent with the Veterans Memorial’s four other statues of male soldiers in battledress, and was completely irrelevant as a representation of today’s women warriors. “They wanted this aggressive, modern woman in fatigues,” he recalled of the commission’s original mandate. “They didn’t want someone in makeup and high heels.” His statue, he added, was not a “runway model and not a Playboy bunny,” but a “big, strong girl who’s been through military training.”36 Throughout the rest of the decade, the statue remained in Mullins’s studio, unchanged and ready for bronzing. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, with West Virginia providing a steady stream of soldiers, male and female: by 2007, the state was ranked eighth largest in the nation in terms of veterans in its population. Indeed, its numbers of women veterans had doubled to over 11,000

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 from the time Mullins had accepted the commission for the women soldier memorial in 1998. Finally, in 2010, state ofﬁcials acquiesced, preparing a pedestal for Mullins’s statue and arranging for another sculptor to design four bronze bas- relief plaques to be added to its base: a dedication plaque on one side, and three other plaques featuring images of women soldiers in different eras of military service. In several scenes they are depicted in skirts, dressed as ladies. West Virginia’s Female Veterans Memorial was installed and dedicated on November 11, 2011, during Veterans Day ceremonies held on the grounds of the state Capitol Complex (Figure 11). Governor-elect Earl Ray Tomblin unveiled the memorial, remarking: “With each new conﬂict, women take on more and more tasks.” U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller recorded a special tribute video shown at the

208 Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

Figure 11. Clara Eaton (left) and Miriam McCaw (right), women veterans of World War II, salute during the playing of taps at the dedication of the West Virginia Female Veterans Memorial at the state Capitol Complex on November 11, 2011, Charleston, West Virginia. Sculpture designed by Joe Mullins. Photo by Chip Ellis. Courtesy The Charleston Gazette. 209 dedication service, declaring: “Today we honor the skilled and devoted West Virginia women veterans, who along with their male counterparts, have proudly served their country .... Today’s women veterans are equally as strong and their services as critical regardless of rank or position in providing for our nation’s defense.”37 More than a decade of controversy was seemingly forgotten as politicians, soldiers, and civilians united to pay tribute to West Virginia’s women warriors. Contemporary controversies over the commemorative representation of women soldiers as ladies in skirts or as tough warriors in t-shirts divert attention from the real-life problems that women face when they join the ranks of the U.S. military. While women soldier memorials are not directly tasked with such an agenda, their failure to reckon with critical issues of sexism and subjugation in an American institution that more and more women are eager to join makes them complicit with that institution, and with its own failure to protect and value all of its members. Of course, the steady growth of these memorials mirrors contemporary American infatuation with the military, with masculinity, and with war: with seeing all Americans in military uniform and insuring the nation’s incessant engagement in global conﬂict. While women warrior memorials pay tribute to female soldiers, they also perpetuate the impossible conditions for feminism and peace in the foreseeable future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This article stems from a paper presented at the “Gender, Place, and Space” Conference held at the University of Notre Dame, 23--25 March 2010, and I would like to thank those who participated in and attended the panel titled “Memorials” for their helpful suggestions. Portions were also presented at the workshop “21st Century Soldiering: Mercenaries, Memorials, Movies,” held at the Centre for Advanced Security Theory (CAST) at the University of Copenhagen, 15 December 2010, and I would like to thank Vibeke Schou Tjalve for inviting me to participate. Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013

NOTES 1 Cari Shane, “Why the dearth of statues honoring women in Statuary Hall and elsewhere?”, The Washington Post, 15 Apr. 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/why-the- dearth-of-statues-honoring-women-in-statuary-hall-and-elsewhere/2011/04/11/AFx8lgjD_story. html (accessed 20 Apr. 2012). 2 Patricia Leigh Brown, “’Rosie the Riveter’ Honored in California Memorial,” New York Times,22 Oct. 2000: A16. 3 On women and Civil War commemoration see Cynthia Mills and Pamela H. Simpson, ed. Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003); David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 255–299; and Kirk Savage,

210 Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 188, 153, n.64. 4 G. Kurt Piehler, “The War Dead and the Gold Star: American Commemoration of the First World War,” in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, in ed. John R. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 168–185. 5 On May 25, 2011, Representative Jon Runyan (R-NJ) introduced H.R. 1980 to the 112th Congress, authorizing the Gold Star Mothers National Monument Foundation to establish a national monument in the District of Columbia; subcommittee hearings were held on Nov. 3, 2011. A similar bill was introduced in 2009 but failed to become law. Sculptor Andrew Chernak has proposed one design for the national memorial; see his description of the monument: http://www.gsmmonument. org/Proposal/Proposal.htm (accessed 25 Feb. 2012). 6 “139 Female Soldiers Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan,” AllGov, 12 Apr. 2012, http://www. allgov.com/US_and_the_World/ViewNews/139_Female_Soldiers_Have_Died_in_Iraq_and_Af- ghanistan_120412 (accessed 15 Jul. 2012). 7 Huma Khan, “Rick Santorum at Odds with the Public on Women in Combat,” ABCNews, 10 Feb. 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/rick-santorum-at-odds-with-the-public-on-- women-in-combat/ (accessed 2 Mar. 2012); Ed O’Keefe and Jon Cohen, “Most Americans back women in combat roles, poll says,” The Washington Post, 16 Mar. 2011, http://www. washingtonpost.com/local/politics/most-americans-back-women-in-combat-roles-poll-says/2011/ 03/16/ABTereg_story.html (accessed 3 Mar. 2012). 8 Alferez’s dates are 1909–1999; for his biography see Wendy Hall Maloney, “Enrique Alferez,” in The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, vol. 5, ed. Kenneth T. Jackson, Karen Markoe, and Arnie Markoe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 8–9. 9 Leisa D. Meyer, “Creating G.I. Jane: The Regulation of Sexuality and Sexual Behavior in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II,” in Lesbian Subjects: A Feminist Studies Reader, ed. Martha Vicinus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 66, 69. 10 Alferez based the statue of Molly Marine on Mosgrove (whom he married in the mid-1940s) and on four Marines from the New Orleans recruiting ofﬁce: Sergeant Hazel Parker and 1st Lt. Elizabeth Anne Delp (Annie Snyder) posed for the body of the sculpture, and Sgts. Louise Godal and Neilson Strock posed for the face; see Lance Cpl. Lance Beckmore, “Molly Marine Monument Dedicated at Parris Island,” The Woman Marine Home Page, 23 Oct. 1999, http://www.reocities.com/ wmarinering/MOLLYMARINE.htm (accessed 11 Mar. 2012). 11 Cpl. James Covington, “Quantico to Unveil ‘Molly Marine’ Statue in Tribute to Women in the Marine Corps,” The Women Marine Home Page, 1 Sept. 2000, http://www.reocities.com/ wmarinering/MOLLYMARINE.htm (accessed 11 Mar. 2012). 12 “Mount Vernon Statue Honors Women Vets, Maj. Tammy Duckworth,” GalesworthPlanet.com, 21 Jun. 2011, http://galesburgplanet.com/posts/4596 (accessed 14 Mar. 2012). 13 Andrew J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (New

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 23. 14 “Global military spending hits high but growth slows,” Reuters, 10 Apr. 2011, at: http://ca.reuters. com/article/businessNews/idCATRE73937Y20110410 (accessed 3 Mar. 2012). 15 Bacevich, The New American Militarism,2. 16 Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 230. The memorial features the sculpture Spirit of Freedom by Ed Hamilton. See also Nick Capasso, “Remember the Ladies: New Women’s Memorials in Boston,” Sculpture 19 (2000): 46–51. 17 John Lindell and Joel Sanders, “Cadet Quarters, U.S. Air Force Academy,” in Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, ed. Joel Sanders (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), 74. 18 Dick Foster, “AFA Women Still Dodge Flak, Resentment toward Female Cadets Viewed as Ingrained in Culture,” Rocky Mountain News, 14 Jan. 2004: A12. 19 Eric Schmitt, “Air Force Academy Zooms in on Sex Cases,” New York Times, 4 May 1994: A1, A19; “Air Force Investigates Handling of Sex Assault Cases,” Newsday, 8 Mar. 2003: A19.

211 20 Diane Jean Schemo, “Rate of Rape at Academy is Put at 12%,” New York Times, 29 Aug. 2003: A12. 21 Katherine L. Schifani, “Bring Me Men: Intertextual Identity Formation at the US Air Force Academy,” (M.A. Thesis, University of Massachusetts, 2008): 43, 48. On male cadet opposition to women in the Academy see Colleen Dalton, “The Sexual Assault Crisis in the United States Air Force Academy,” Cardozo Women’s Law Journal 11.177 (2004–2005): 177 and passim. 22 Melissa T. Brown, Enlisting Masculinity: The Construction of Gender in U.S. Military Recruiting Advertising During the All-Volunteer Force (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 172. 23 “Panetta: Could be 19,000 military sex assaults each year,” U.S. News on msnbc.com, 18 Jan. 2012, http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/18/10184222-panetta-could-be-19000-military-sex-assaults-each-year (accessed 6 Mar. 2012) and Anna Mulrine, “Pentagon Report: Sexual assault in the military up dramatically,” CSMonitor.com, 19 Jan. 2012, http://www.csmonitor.com/ USA/Military/2012/0119/Pentagon-report-Sexual-assault-in-the-military-up-dramatically (accessed 6 Mar. 2012). 24 Dalton, “The Sexual Assault Crisis,” 191. 25 Schifani, “Bring Me Men,” 52. 26 See also the statue by Lewis at the National WASP World War II Museum in Sweetwater, Texas. 27 “Statue angers female war vets,” Brockton (MA) Enterprise, 12 Nov. 1998: 4. 28 Elizabeth Benjamin, “Statue insults women, senator says (calls for removal of Women Veterans War Memorial),” Albany Times Union, 9 June 2004: 1. 29 Joseph P. Mullins quoted in “Artists, veterans argue over female veteran statue,” segment on West Virginia Public Broadcasting, 8 Feb. 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ¼ V6AwOPVXuH8 (accessed 7 Mar. 2010). 30 Joseph P. Mullins quoted in phone interview with author, 9 Mar. 2010. 31 “Female Statue Not Feminine Enough,” CBS News, 6 March 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/ stories/2003/03/07/national/main543219.shtml (accessed 7 Mar. 2010); Lawrence Messina, “Impasse threatens statue to female vets,” ArmyTimes, 7 Sept. 2008, http://www.armytimes. com/news/2008/09/ap_veterans_statue_090708/ (accessed 12 Mar. 2010). 32 Janet Maslin, “G.I. Jane (1997), Here’s a Jane Who’s More Like Tarzan,” New York Times,22 Aug. 1997: B15. 33 Jennifer Lunden, “Women Vets Say Memorial Statue Too Masculine,” National Public Radio, “All Things Considered,” 5 Mar. 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId ¼ 452426 (accessed 17 Jan. 2007); “WV Agency Scraps Women Vets Statue,” Military.com, 2 Mar. 2005, http:// www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_statue_030205,00.html (accessed 8 Mar. 2010). 34 “WV Agency Scraps Women Vets Statue;” for responses see the website “The semi-normal, day to day life of a female marine,” 15 Sept. 2008, http://akinoluna.blogspot.com/2008/09/ impasse-threatens-statue-to-female-vets.html (accessed 8 Mar. 2010). 35 Linch quoted in “WV Agency Scraps Women Vets Statue.” 36 Mullins quoted in Lawrence Messina, “Impasse threatens statue to female vets,” and “Female Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 Statue Not Feminine Enough.” 37 Rusty Marks, “Female soldier statue dedicated in Charleston,” The Charleston Gazette, 12 Nov. 2011, http://wvgazette.com/News/201111120006?page ¼ 2&build ¼ cache (accessed 3 Mar. 2012); “Rockefeller Praises the Effort of Women Veterans at Memorial Dedication Ceremony,” Press Release, 11 Nov. 2011, http://rockefeller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID ¼ 5aa81b07-c2c7- 4f64-b190-007ac0551f7f (accessed 3 Mar. 2012).

BIBLIOGRAPHY “139 Female Soldiers Have Died in Iraq and Afghanistan.” AllGov, 12 Apr. 2012: http://www.allgov. com/US_and_the_World/ViewNews/139_Female_Soldiers_Have_Died_in_Iraq_and_ Afghanistan_120412

212 “Air Force Investigates Handling of Sex Assault Cases.” Newsday 8 Mar. 2003, A19. “Artists, veterans argue over female veteran statue.” Segment on West Virginia Public Broadcasting, 8 Feb. 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v¼V6AwOPVXuH8 Bacevich, Andrew J. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Beckmore, Lance. “Molly Marine Monument Dedicated at Parris Island.” The Woman Marine Home Page, 23 Oct. 1999: http://www.reocities.com/wmarinering/MOLLYMARINE.htm Benjamin, Elizabeth. “Statue insults women, senator says (calls for removal of Women Veterans War Memorial).” Albany Times Union, 9 Jun. 2004, 1. Blight, David W. Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. Brown, Melissa T. Enlisting Masculinity: The Construction of Gender in U.S. Military Recruiting Advertising During the All-Volunteer Force. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Brown, Patricia Leigh. “‘Rosie the Riveter’ Honored in California Memorial.” New York Times, 22 Oct. 2000: A16. Capasso, Nick. “Remember the Ladies: New Women’s Memorials in Boston.” Sculpture 19 (2000): 46–51. Covington, James. “Quantico to Unveil ‘Molly Marine’ Statue in Tribute to Women in the Marine Corps.” The Women Marine Home Page,1Sept.2000:http://www.reocities.com/ wmarinering/MOLLYMARINE.htm Dalton, Colleen. “The Sexual Assault Crisis in the United States Air Force Academy.” Cardozo Women’s Law Journal 11.177 (2004–2005): 177–202. Doss, Erika. Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. “Female Statue Not Feminine Enough.” CBS News, 6 Mar. 2003: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/ 2003/03/07/national/main543219.shtml Foster, Dick. “AFA Women Still Dodge Flak, Resentment toward Female Cadets Viewed as Ingrained in Culture.” Rocky Mountain News, 4 Jan. 2004: A12. “Global military spending hits high but growth slows.” Reuters, 10 Apr. 2011: http://ca.reuters.com/ article/businessNews/idCATRE73937Y20110410 Khan, Huma. “Rick Santorum at Odds with the Public on Women in Combat.” ABCNews, 10 Feb. 2012: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/rick-santorum-at-odds-with-the-public-on- women-in-combat/ Lindell, John and Joel Sanders. “Cadet Quarters, U.S. Air Force Academy.” In Stud: Architectures of Masculinity. Ed. Joel Sanders. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. 68–77. Lunden, Jennifer. “Women Vets Say Memorial Statue Too Masculine.” Segment on National Public Radio “All Things Considered.” 5 Mar. 2005: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story. php?storyId¼452426

Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 Maloney, Wendy Hall. “Enrique Alferez.” In The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives. Ed. Kenneth T Jackson, Karen Markoe and Arnie Markoe. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. 8–9. Marks, Rusty. “Female soldier statue dedicated in Charleston.” The Charleston Gazette, 12 Nov. 2011: http://wvgazette.com/News/201111120006?page¼2&build¼cache Maslin, Janet. “G.I. Jane (1997), Here’s a Jane Who’s More Like Tarzan.” New York Times, 22 Aug. 1977: B15. Messina, Lawrence. “Impasse threatens statue to female vets.” ArmyTimes, 7 Sept. 2008: http:// www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/ap_veterans_statue_090708/ Meyer, Leisa, D. “Creating G.I. Jane: The Regulation of Sexuality and Sexual Behavior in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II.” In Lesbian Subjects: A Feminist Studies Reader. Ed. Martha Vicinus. Bloomington: 66–64 Indiana University Press, 1996. Mills, Cynthia and Pamela H Simpson, eds. Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2003.

213 “Mount Vernon Statue Honors Women Vets, Maj. Tammy Duckworth.” GalesworthPlanet.com,21 Jun. 2011: http://galesburgplanet.com/posts/4596 Mulrine, Anna. “Pentagon Report: Sexual assault in the military up dramatically.” CSMonitor.com, 19 Jan. 2012: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2012/0119/Pentagon-report-Sexua- l-assault-in-the-military-up-dramatically O’Keefe, Ed and Jon Cohen. “Most Americans back women in combat roles, poll says.” The Washington Post.16Mar.2011:http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/politics/ most-americans-back-women-in-combat-roles-poll-says/2011/03/16/ABTereg_story.html “Panetta: Could be 19,000 military sex assaults each year.” U.S. News on msnbc.com, 18 Jan. 2012: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/18/10184222-panetta-could-be-19000-military-sex-assaults-each-year Piehler, Kurt G. “The War Dead and the Gold Star: American Commemoration of the First World War.” In Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity. Ed. John R Gillis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. 168–85. “Rockefeller Praises the Effort of Women Veterans at Memorial Dedication Ceremony.” Press Release, 11 Nov. 2011: http://rockefeller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases? ID¼5aa81b07-c2c7-4f64-b190-007ac0551f7f Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth- Century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Schemo, Diane Jean. “Rate of Rape at Academy is Put at 12%.” New York Times, 29 Aug. 2003: A12 Schifani, Katherine L. “Bring Me Men: Intertextual Identity Formation at the US Air Force Academy.” M.A. Thesis, University of Massachusetts, 2008. Schmitt, Eric. “Air Force Academy Zooms in on Sex Cases.” New York Times, 4 May 1994: A1, A19 Shane, Cari. “Why the dearth of statues honoring women in Statuary Hall and elsewhere?” The Washington Post, 15 Apr. 2011: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/ why-the-dearth-of-statues-honoring-women-in-statuary-hall-and-elsewhere/2011/04/11/ AFx8lgjD_story.html “Statue angers female war vets.” Brockton (MA) Enterprise, 12 Nov. 1998: 4. “WV Agency Scraps Women Vets Statue.” Military.com, 2 Mar. 2005: http://www.military.com/ NewsContent/0,13319,FL_statue_030205,00.html

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Erika Doss teaches in the Department of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (1991), Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in Downloaded by [University of Notre Dame] at 06:50 18 September 2013 American Communities (1995), Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith, and Image (1999), Looking at Life Magazine (editor, 2001), Twentieth-Century American Art (2002), and Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (2010). Doss is also the editor of the “Culture America” series at the University Press of Kansas, and is on the editorial boards of Memory Studies, Public Art Dialogue, and Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief.

214