CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Bausch, Leonie Hanna |
|---|---|
| Title | 'Alsatian by Sentiment': Gendered Negotiations of Multi-Layered National Belonging in Alsace, 1918-1919 |
| Summary | Following the First World War, French civil-military administrators constructed hierarchical layers of national belonging by issuing different identity cards to Alsatian residents, who strategically appealed these classifications to claim ‘belonging’ in the French national community. Referring to ideas of descent, patriotism, and local integration, the actors utilised and temporarily adapted gendered constructions of belonging to (re-)classify the civic status of Alsatians. Employing methodological and theoretical approaches from gender and transnational history along with nationalism scholarship and legal history, this thesis demonstrates that national belonging in post-WW1 Alsace was negotiated in a dynamic, multi-layered, and gendered manner. In contrast to conceptualisations of the ‘civic’ character of France, French authorities and Alsatian residents invoked both civic and ethnic conceptions of belonging. Dismissing the option of minority rights for the Alsatian population, French administrators allocated privileges and rights according to family descent to determine who ‘belonged’ and was ‘foreign’; petitioners in turn co-opted gendered narratives of Alsatian Francophilia and nested belonging to link their local lived experiences to the nation. The identity cards challenged patrilineal descent and derivative citizenship. Female and male petitioners alike accessed gendered avenues to national belonging by using family members as proxy, yet their appeals reinforced gendered roles of women as ethno-cultural assimilators and men as civic participants in the nation. This thesis argues that in a moment of conflict the gendered boundaries of the national community were malleable, and re-imagined in overlapping, nested, and competing ways to fit the specific needs of the French administration and Alsatian inhabitants. |
| Supervisor | Zimmermann, Susan |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/bausch_leonie.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University