Political Obligation in the Trenches: Military Service and American Citizenship in World War I

FAIN: FT-52942-04

Christopher Capozzola
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA 02139-4307)

This project is part of an in-depth study of the social history of political obligation in the United States during World War I. The larger research project examines military conscription and its enforcement, voluntary associations and their dual roles in war mobilization and homefront repression, and the rise of legal understandings of civil liberties and citizenship rights, demonstrating how political obligation as a voluntary act of consent was tied to coercive practices of citizenship in political culture of the period. Summer research will expand the story beyond the homefront, using the wartime writings of American soldiers, sailors, and overseas civilian women volunteers to explore political obligations in the US military during World War I.