Description: Virginia Woolf famously wrote 'as a woman I have no country', suggesting that women had little stake in defending countries where they are considered second-class citizens, and should instead be forces for peace. Yet women have been perpetrators as well as victims of violence in nationalist conflicts. This unique book generates insights into the role of gender in nationalist violence by examining feature films from a range of conflict zones. In The Battle of Algiers, female bombers destroy civilians while men dress in women's clothes to prevent the French army from capturing and torturing them. Prisoner of the Mountains shows a Chechen girl falling in love with her Russian captive as his mother tries to rescue him. Providing historical and political context to these and other films, Evangelista identifies the key role that economic decline plays in threatening masculine identity and provoking the misogynist violence that often accompanies nationalist wars.
Brief description: Matthew Evangelista is President White Professor of History and Political Science and former chair of the Department of Government at Cornell University.
Review Quotes: "A genuinely innovative contribution to the currently intense discussion about the gendered militarization of nationalism. Matthew Evangelista reveals how even serious international filmmakers often unwittingly reinforce wartime patriarchal norms while breaking cinematic conventions."
- Cynthia Enloe, Clark University and author of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War (2010)