Title
"Between the two Great Battlefields:" Scottish Medical Women's Encounters with the Eastern Front
Date of Award
1-1-2021
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in History
First Advisor
Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson
Second Advisor
Susan R. Grayzel
Third Advisor
Vivian Ibrahim
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This dissertation discusses the role of medical women on the battlefront during the First World War. Using the Scottish Women’s Hospitals as a case study, it argues that frontline medical women occupied a liminal space on the fronts. As both witnesses and participants, they confronted wounds, trauma, and violence wrought by total war. Since this was typically reserved for the combatant, contemporary notions of gender refused to acknowledge medical women’s authority within the war story. This dissertation employs medical women’s wartime experiences to argue that their war story redefines our understandings of combatancy, allowing us to see it as a spectrum going beyond the furnishing of arms. To make these arguments, this dissertation analyzes the experiences of trained doctors within the Scottish Women’s Hospitals from 1914-1919. It specifically focuses on the doctor’s experiences in Serbia, drawing attention to the fluidity of the Eastern Front and how this gave medical women different opportunities within their wartime service. Finally, this dissertation concludes by analyzing the commemoration of the First World War and women’s participation within it to argue that despite their efforts, women’s wartime service continued to be marginalized within Victorian and Edwardian conceptions of gender.
Recommended Citation
Holter, Fiona Gale, ""Between the two Great Battlefields:" Scottish Medical Women's Encounters with the Eastern Front" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2105.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2105