Rhetorical Vessels: Public Womanhood as Visual Warrant in World War II Venereal Disease Campaigns

Abstract

This article considers how venereal disease campaigns during World War II offered a warrant through public health discourse for the mass incarceration of American women in an era of shifting gender expectations. During the war years, at least 30,000 American women detained without documentation were held in domestic quarantine camps under suspicion of transmitting venereal diseases to unsuspecting soldiers and thereby undermining the war effort. Analyzing public health campaign posters from this period, I argue that the U.S. government achieved the rhetorical transformation of allegedly promiscuous white women into state enemies through visual tropes of the “public woman.” The conclusion considers how analyzing less prevalent detainment discourses, such as those embedded in public health, may aid in understanding contemporary detainment issues.

Keywords:

• Citizenship
• public health
• public woman
• visual argument
• World War II

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2018 National Communication Association in Salt Lake City, UT. The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers, Jessica A. Johnson, Alvin J. Primack, Jennifer Reinwald, Ryan Blank, and Lester C. Olson for their helpful feedback throughout the writing of this article.