March 1, 2017 from 12-1 pm

CAS, Room 209

This presentation examines how English, French, and Native women in the borderlands of northeastern North America fulfilled a variety of essential military roles in wars that defined the region between 1630-1763. Women lived in fortified communities that served as the front lines of these conflicts, fighting alone and alongside men. Historians who have noted only the most dramatic examples of women’s participation in these wars have assumed that instances of women’s war-making were rare. This book returns women to the border wars, arguing that women’s wartime participation served larger military and political strategies. It explores how wartime necessity and gender ideologies encouraged women to assume significant, public roles in wars that determined the futures of nations and empires.

Gina Martino is Assistant Professor of History, specializing in early American history and women’s and gender history. She is the author of “‘As Potent a Prince As Any Round About Her’: Rethinking Weetamoo of the Pocasset and Native Female Leadership in Early America,” published in the Journal of Women’s History. Prof. Martino is currently revising her book, Among the Vanguard: Women at War in the Borderlands of the Early American Northeast, under contract at The University of North Carolina Press. She is also affiliated faculty in UA’s Women’s Studies program.