Monographs, Edited Collections, PhD Dissertation by Sarah Glassford
Many women who lived through the Second World War believed it heralded new status and opportuniti... more Many women who lived through the Second World War believed it heralded new status and opportunities. But did it? Making the Best of It examines how gender and other identities intersected to shape the experiences of female Canadians and Newfoundlanders during the war. The contributors to this thoughtful collection consider mainstream and minority populations, girls and women, and different parts of Canada and Newfoundland in their essays. Ultimately, they lay a foundation for a better understanding of the ways in which the lives of Canadian women and girls were altered during and after the 1940s.
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"For more than a century the Canadian Red Cross Society has provided help and comfort to vulnerab... more "For more than a century the Canadian Red Cross Society has provided help and comfort to vulnerable people at home and abroad. In the first detailed national history of the organization, Sarah Glassford reveals how the European-born Red Cross movement came to Canada and took root, and why it flourished."
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The First World War demanded sacrifice from all levels of society, and the degree to which citize... more The First World War demanded sacrifice from all levels of society, and the degree to which citizens at home were expected to "do their bit" was made explicit in national propaganda. Women and girls in Canada and Newfoundland were indelibly affected by, and were integral parts of, their countries’ war efforts. Yet their varied responses and myriad activities are not recognized in our memory of the war.
A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service actively engages in redressing that absence and in exploring why the retelling of women’s stories meets such resistance. Drawing upon a multidisciplinary spectrum of recent work -- studies on mobilizing women, paid and volunteer employment at home and overseas, grief, childhood, family life, and literary representations -- this collection brings Canadian and Newfoundland women and girls into the history of the First World War and marks their place in the narrative of national transformation.
Recognizing women’s active and emotional responses to the First World War is a crucial step towards understanding how that war shaped Newfoundland and Canada both during and after the conflict. This volume is therefore essential reading for anyone interested in the history of women, the First World War, Newfoundland, or Canada.
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This study is an institutional history of one of Canada's oldest and most prestigious voluntary o... more This study is an institutional history of one of Canada's oldest and most prestigious voluntary organizations, and its role in Canadian society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Between 1885 and 1939 the Canadian Red Cross Society underwent a series of transformations: establishment as a branch of the British Red Cross Society, temporary growth during the South African War, near-death after 1902, reorganization and incorporation in 1909, national expansion and overseas accomplishment during the Great War, and expansion into public health work after 1918. While the organization changed as an institution during this period, so did its relationship with Canadians and its role in Canadian society.
Through a qualitative analysis of Canadian Red Cross Society records, supplemented by memoirs, journals, personal papers, contemporary newspapers, and government records, it becomes clear that the Canadian Red Cross Society did not become Canada's leading humanitarian aid organization and one of its most enduring charities purely by chance. The Society's survival and successful adaptation prior to the Second World War rested variously on its ability to tap into contemporary currents of militarism, patriotism, and maternalism; to mobilize first military and medical men, then middle- and upper-class white women, and eventually as wide a swath of the Canadian population as possible; to construct and exploit openings for itself in military medicine, women's wartime service, and Canadian health and welfare provision; and to both nationalize and regionalize, creating a nation-building mission for itself in the broadly defined health realm and entrusting the future of the national organization to the initiative and activity of local and provincial branches. The Society's adaptability and elastic interpretations of its mandate eventually came to annoy and infuriate individuals in government and other voluntary and charitable organizations, but they proved crucial to the Society's longevity.
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Peer-Reviewed Articles by Sarah Glassford
As the youth wing of the Canadian Red Cross Society, the Junior Red Cross (JRC) program of the 19... more As the youth wing of the Canadian Red Cross Society, the Junior Red Cross (JRC) program of the 1920s and 1930s aimed to teach school-aged children and youth habits of good health, good citizenship, and service to others. Inspired by a transnational ethic of humanitarianism, the program tried to build international ties of friendship between JRC members in Canada and those elsewhere, while shaping Canadian Juniors in a particular mould of national citizenship. Through an examination of adult and child contributions to the national JRC magazine, and the portfolios Juniors created to send overseas, this article explores the tensions inherent in the national and transnational lessons conveyed by adult JRC leaders as well as the ways young Canadians embraced, modified, or rejected those perspectives.
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Since the late twentieth-century, the popularity and prevalence of digital formats have presented... more Since the late twentieth-century, the popularity and prevalence of digital formats have presented challenges for two groups closely associated with archives: archivists and historians. If archivists cannot fulfill their mandate to preserve our growing digital documentary heritage in the face of rapid technological change, the historians who are one of the core user groups of these records will have very little material with which to reconstruct and analyze the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. This article explores the benefits and challenges that digitization and digital preservation have brought to archivists, as well as the repercussions of these developments for historians. Although the challenges are significant, there is reason to be optimistic: new archival approaches and technologies are being developed every year, and historians have a tradition of making the most of whatever archivists can preserve.
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This article explores the untold history of English-Canadian children's First World War work for ... more This article explores the untold history of English-Canadian children's First World War work for the Canadian Red Cross Society. First it examines young people's material and symbolic contributions, then follows the legacies of children's war work through to the Second World War. It also highlights the connection between youthful war work and the interwar Junior Red Cross (focused on health, service, and citizenship). English-Canadian youth did not cause the conflict, but through their involvement with the Canadian Red Cross Society successive generations of them bore the war's tangible and intangible burdens.
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A concise survey of Canadian women's involvement in the First World War.
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How a peace-promoting interwar children's organization attempted to mobilize Canadian children fo... more How a peace-promoting interwar children's organization attempted to mobilize Canadian children for humanitarian service in wartime, and the ways in which children responded to those tactics.
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Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research …, 2008
During the First World War, Canadians (primarily but not exclusively women) voluntarily gave thei... more During the First World War, Canadians (primarily but not exclusively women) voluntarily gave their time and labour to the Canadian Red Cross Society in order to aid sick and wounded soldiers overseas. Red Cross activities such as fundraising, rolling bandages, knitting socks, writing letters for soldiers in hospital, tracing the missing and wounded, and sending parcels to Prisoners of War were described by those within the organization as acts of caring. In time, the Canadian Red Cross and its volunteers were also associated more specifically with mothering. The carework Canadians undertook through the Canadian Red Cross Society involved time-consuming labour, and portions of it had enormous economic value, but these aspects of Red Cross work were consistently downplayed at the time in favour of praise for the love, tenderness, and caring this work was said to express for sick and wounded Canadian citizen-soldiers. In this way the Canadian Red Cross Society and its volunteers were said to be serving as surrogate mothers for Canadian “boys” overseas. Constructing the carework of the Red Cross as an act of mothering gave the organization symbolic and moral power, drawing broad public support and large financial contributions for its work. As maternal feminists had done repeatedly since the late nineteenth century, some Canadian women used this mothering discourse associated with the Red Cross to translate their voluntary work into greater roles for themselves within the public sphere.
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Newfoundland and Labrador Studies, 2001
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Book Chapters by Sarah Glassford
The First World War played a crucial role in the evolution of the Canadian Red Cross Society, tak... more The First World War played a crucial role in the evolution of the Canadian Red Cross Society, taking it from a negligible organization dominated by men and focused on battlefield aid, to a ubiquitous national institution mobilizing men, women and children alike. This wartime experience shifted the organization's understanding of what it was capable of and who was deserving of humanitarian aid, leading to an expansion into peacetime public health work beginning in 1919.
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An exploration of emotional labour and resilience within the personal and professional lives of t... more An exploration of emotional labour and resilience within the personal and professional lives of the Canadian Red Cross Corps, whose overseas contingent worked closer to the Second World War battlefields than most Canadian volunteers. Charged, in part, with re-creating a sense of home and family for enlisted men, these young women endured the strains of service by relying heavily upon the emotional bonds they created on the edges of the conflict.
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An analysis of the major themes, questions, and chronological periods dealt with in existing hist... more An analysis of the major themes, questions, and chronological periods dealt with in existing historical writing about Canadian women, war, and peace, with suggestions for new directions.
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(Article is in French)
Explores women's voluntary and paid work for the Canadian Red Cross throu... more (Article is in French)
Explores women's voluntary and paid work for the Canadian Red Cross throughout the 20th century. In both peacetime and wartime, women's work for the Red Cross was seen as natural and fitting because Canadian society viewed women as inherently suited to care for others.
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Book Reviews & Review Essays by Sarah Glassford
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Monographs, Edited Collections, PhD Dissertation by Sarah Glassford
A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service actively engages in redressing that absence and in exploring why the retelling of women’s stories meets such resistance. Drawing upon a multidisciplinary spectrum of recent work -- studies on mobilizing women, paid and volunteer employment at home and overseas, grief, childhood, family life, and literary representations -- this collection brings Canadian and Newfoundland women and girls into the history of the First World War and marks their place in the narrative of national transformation.
Recognizing women’s active and emotional responses to the First World War is a crucial step towards understanding how that war shaped Newfoundland and Canada both during and after the conflict. This volume is therefore essential reading for anyone interested in the history of women, the First World War, Newfoundland, or Canada.
Through a qualitative analysis of Canadian Red Cross Society records, supplemented by memoirs, journals, personal papers, contemporary newspapers, and government records, it becomes clear that the Canadian Red Cross Society did not become Canada's leading humanitarian aid organization and one of its most enduring charities purely by chance. The Society's survival and successful adaptation prior to the Second World War rested variously on its ability to tap into contemporary currents of militarism, patriotism, and maternalism; to mobilize first military and medical men, then middle- and upper-class white women, and eventually as wide a swath of the Canadian population as possible; to construct and exploit openings for itself in military medicine, women's wartime service, and Canadian health and welfare provision; and to both nationalize and regionalize, creating a nation-building mission for itself in the broadly defined health realm and entrusting the future of the national organization to the initiative and activity of local and provincial branches. The Society's adaptability and elastic interpretations of its mandate eventually came to annoy and infuriate individuals in government and other voluntary and charitable organizations, but they proved crucial to the Society's longevity.
Peer-Reviewed Articles by Sarah Glassford
Book Chapters by Sarah Glassford
Explores women's voluntary and paid work for the Canadian Red Cross throughout the 20th century. In both peacetime and wartime, women's work for the Red Cross was seen as natural and fitting because Canadian society viewed women as inherently suited to care for others.
Book Reviews & Review Essays by Sarah Glassford
A Sisterhood of Suffering and Service actively engages in redressing that absence and in exploring why the retelling of women’s stories meets such resistance. Drawing upon a multidisciplinary spectrum of recent work -- studies on mobilizing women, paid and volunteer employment at home and overseas, grief, childhood, family life, and literary representations -- this collection brings Canadian and Newfoundland women and girls into the history of the First World War and marks their place in the narrative of national transformation.
Recognizing women’s active and emotional responses to the First World War is a crucial step towards understanding how that war shaped Newfoundland and Canada both during and after the conflict. This volume is therefore essential reading for anyone interested in the history of women, the First World War, Newfoundland, or Canada.
Through a qualitative analysis of Canadian Red Cross Society records, supplemented by memoirs, journals, personal papers, contemporary newspapers, and government records, it becomes clear that the Canadian Red Cross Society did not become Canada's leading humanitarian aid organization and one of its most enduring charities purely by chance. The Society's survival and successful adaptation prior to the Second World War rested variously on its ability to tap into contemporary currents of militarism, patriotism, and maternalism; to mobilize first military and medical men, then middle- and upper-class white women, and eventually as wide a swath of the Canadian population as possible; to construct and exploit openings for itself in military medicine, women's wartime service, and Canadian health and welfare provision; and to both nationalize and regionalize, creating a nation-building mission for itself in the broadly defined health realm and entrusting the future of the national organization to the initiative and activity of local and provincial branches. The Society's adaptability and elastic interpretations of its mandate eventually came to annoy and infuriate individuals in government and other voluntary and charitable organizations, but they proved crucial to the Society's longevity.
Explores women's voluntary and paid work for the Canadian Red Cross throughout the 20th century. In both peacetime and wartime, women's work for the Red Cross was seen as natural and fitting because Canadian society viewed women as inherently suited to care for others.