Following the First World War, the American Red Cross achieved international recognition and fame but also transformed itself into a major national humanitarian organization by the end of the conflict. In addition to its phenomenal growth during the war, the programs it created in order to alleviate the pain and suffering of soldiers, civilians, and foreigners alike would forever cement its place as the nation\u2019s humanitarian relief organization. One of the many debates surrounding the topic of the American Red Cross\u00a0on gender and war came<\/span>\u00a0in the form of its transformation or the \u201crise and fall\u201d of the organization as it began to adopt an international sensibility and responsibility to help others, especially foreigners, during the war. In Julia F. Irwin\u2019s Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening<\/em>, she explicitly stated that by implementing languages of obligation as part of their rhetorical strategy during World War I, the American Red Cross helped convinced U.S. citizens that it was of a vital national interest to donate their money and time to not only help foreigners in need but also the war effort. Marian Moser Jones\u2019 The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal<\/em>, on the other hand, also detailed the transformation of the American Red Cross and how the war ultimately transformed the organization into the powerful institution that remains today.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another debate or theme involving the American Red Cross that the authors in my annotated bibliography all have in common with would be the experiences of women who have made countless of sacrifices for their nation in times of war. From their roles as nurses and volunteers, these women battled sexism and racism, worked long hours and in sufferable conditions, and yet, they still accomplished an extraordinary amount of work through their philanthropic efforts overseas. In addition to exploring the cultural shifts of women\u2019s involvement and the responsibilities of women during wartime, historians have also looked at how ideas of motherhood have come to shape the war effort both at home and abroad. Through the use of American Red Cross posters produced between 1914 and 1918, P.J. Lopez\u2019s \u201cAmerican Red Cross Posters and the Cultural Politics of Motherhood in World War I\u201d looked at how they became\u00a0a fundamental\u00a0propaganda tool for communicating notions of femininity and patriotism to American women while also exploring the\u00a0influences of U.S. involvement in the war as well as the social constructions of white femininity\u00a0of the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following the First World War, the American Red Cross achieved international recognition and fame but also transformed itself into a major national humanitarian organization by the end of the conflict. In addition to its phenomenal growth during the war, the programs it created in order to alleviate the pain and suffering of soldiers, civilians, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}