Posted - December 14, 2011

Treatment of War Widows Topic of EC Faculty Colloquium

february 1 - 3:15 pm - melick library gammon room

Eureka College assistant professor of history Erika Quinn will present “Putting War Widows in Their Place? Mass Death, Mourning, and Memory” at 3:15 p.m. Feb. 1 in the Gammon Room in Melick Library at Eureka College. The free, public presentation is part of the Faculty Colloquium Series.

The presentation will explore how the German imperial and national socialist regimes told war widows of the first and second World Wars that their husbands had sacrificed themselves for a noble cause and died heroic deaths,  yet the widows themselves faced meager survivors’ pensions, state scrutiny and often social opprobrium. Quinn will discuss how widows navigated these tensions and how society tried to fix the widows’ potentially disruptive presence into harmlessness or invisibility. Through exploring widows' testimonies, pleas to chaplains and other care providers, and oral history, Quinn will explore the widows' own agency and emotional agendas.

The presentation is the fourth of five colloquiums by Eureka College faculty members this academic year. The final colloquium will be “A Preliminary Analysis of the Dynamics of an Appalachian Church Community” by English professor Kathy Whitson at 3:15 p.m. April 25 in the Gammon Room.

For more information, contact colloquiums coordinator Scott Hemmenway at (309) 467-6333.

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Contact:

Michele Lehman

Media Relations Coordinator

mlehman@eureka.edu

(309) 467-6318