Leveraging, militarising, and stereotyping civilians for the war effort: pedagogies of gender in war museums in Canada, England, and Europe

ABSTRACT

This article details our exploration of the ways in which gender, militarism, and learning intersect in war museums in Canada, England, and Europe. We outline our theoretical framework of feminist antimilitarism, grounded in adult education; discuss research about museums in general and war museums in particular; and, explain our methodology of feminist discourse analysis and visual analysis. We focus on an element that is typically not a central point of analysis in research about war museums: the pedagogical and gendered representation of civilians. Our findings indicate that civilians are underrepresented, in comparison to soldiers, in war museums, but that, when they are present, they are discursively constructed in ways that teach civilians to be part of the war machine by: leveraging civilian deaths, militarising civilians as soldiers, and stereotyping women civilians. We conclude with suggestions for museum directors, curators, and adult educators to work together to problematise how war is remembered.

KEYWORDS:

• Civilians
• discourse analysis
• feminist antimilitarism
• gender
• soldiers
• visual analysis
• war museums

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A preliminary version of this article was included in the proceedings of Adult Education in Global Times/Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education 2020.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

Notes on contributors

Nancy Taber

Nancy Taber is a Professor in the Department of Educational Studies in the Faculty of Education at Brock University. She teaches in the areas of critical adult education and sociocultural learning, with a focus on gender and militarism. Her research explores the ways in which learning, gender, and militarism interact in daily life, fiction, popular culture, museums, academic institutions, and military organizations.

Ashley Grover

Ash Grover is a PhD student in the Department of Educational Studies at Brock University. Her research is focused on the public pedagogies of popular culture, as well as culturally sustaining and trauma-informed pedagogies. Specifically, Ash is interested in the pedagogical bridge between one’s experiences with trauma, and their engagement with depictions of trauma in popular culture. Outside of academia, her favourite thing to do is go on adventures with her family.