Date of Graduation

8-2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Curriculum and Instruction

Advisor/Mentor

Pijanowski, John C.

Committee Member

Goering, Christian Z.

Second Committee Member

Corrigan, Lisa

Keywords

Social sciences; Education; Gender; Politics; Textual analysis; United States history; World War II

Abstract

Using three curricular interventions from World War II, I employ an alternative rhetorical history to understand how Social studies curriculum has become a space for the simultaneous deliberation of both national identity and gender politics. In working through the propaganda of Rosie the Riveter, the stories of the women of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the experiences of gay men and women in the military during the war, I suggest that Social studies curriculum normalizes and reifies gendered, racial, and queer citizenship in relationship to white, masculine, and heteronormative citizenship. It also utilizes epideictic rhetoric to rhetorically and historically construct problematic notions of citizenship as the curriculum creates and circulates collective memories about gender and the war. I conclude that the result is a national collective memory that is fragmented and that erases significant contributions of political actors that are not considered ideal. Beyond the masculinizing of both history and memory, I argue that history education curriculum generates double consciousness in marginalized groups through language that reinforces active citizenship as hypermasculine targeting “ideal” men and passive citizenship for women, men of color, and non-normative white men.

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