This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Through a study of the British Empire’s largest women’s patriotic organisation, formed in 1900, and still in existence, this book examines the relationship between female imperialism and national identity. It throws new light on women’s involvement in imperialism; on the history of ‘conservative’ women’s organisations; on women’s interventions in debates concerning citizenship and national identity; and on the history of women in white settler societies. After placing the IODE (Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire) in the context of recent scholarly work in Canadian, gender, imperial history and post-colonial theory, the book follows the IODE’s history through the twentieth century. Tracing the organisation into the postcolonial era, where previous imperial ideas are outmoded, it considers the transformation from patriotism to charity, and the turn to colonisation at home in the Canadian North.

Imagining Home offers a unique examination of ideas and images of home in Britain during a period of national decline and loss of imperial power. In exploring the relationship between gender, 'race' and national identity, it higlights the continuing importance of empire in imaginings of the nation during a period of decolonization. Analyzing the significance of colonialism and racism in shaping ideas of motherhood, employment and domestictiy, it traces the process by which Englishness was increasingly associated with domestic order, and the home and family constructed as white. Drawing extensively on oral history and life-writing, Imagining Home examines the multiple meanings of home to women in narratives of beloning and unbelonging. Its focus on the complex interrelationships of white and black women's lives and identities offers a new perspective on this period.

The death of Princess Diana unleashed an international outpouring of grief, love, and press attention virtually unprecedented in history. Yet the exhaustive effort to link an upper class white British woman with "the people" raises questions. What narrative of white femininity transformed Diana into a simultaneous signifier of a national and global popular? What ideologies did the narrative tap into to transform her into an idealized woman of the millennium? Why would a similar idealization not have appeared around a non-white, non-Western, or immigrant woman? Raka Shome investigates the factors that led to this defining cultural/political moment and unravels just what the Diana phenomenon represented for comprehending the relation between white femininity and the nation in postcolonial Britain and its connection to other white female celebrity figures in the millennium. Digging into the media and cultural artifacts that circulated in the wake of Diana's death, Shome investigates a range of theoretical issues surrounding motherhood and the production of national masculinities, global humanitarianism, transnational masculinities, the intersection of fashion and white femininity, and spirituality and national modernity. Her analysis explores how images of white femininity in popular culture intersect with issues of race, gender, class, sexuality, and transnationality in the performance of Anglo national modernities. Moving from ideas on the positioning of privileged white women in global neoliberalism to the emergence of new formations of white femininity in the millennium , Diana and Beyond fearlessly explains the late princess's never-ending renaissance and ongoing cultural relevance.

"This book explores France's complex history of integration and national identity by tracing the unique and historically significant political journey of the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, the French Antilles"--Provided by publisher.

In this major reconceptualization of the history of U.S. foreign policy, Walter Hixson engages with the entire sweep of that history, from its Puritan beginnings to the twenty-first century’s war on terror. He contends that a mythical national identity, which includes the notion of American moral superiority and the duty to protect all of humanity, has had remarkable continuity through the centuries, repeatedly propelling America into war against an endless series of external enemies. As this myth has supported violence, violence in turn has supported the myth. The Myth of American Diplomacy shows the deep connections between American foreign policy and the domestic culture from which it springs. Hixson investigates the national narratives that help to explain ethnic cleansing of Indians, nineteenth-century imperial thrusts in Mexico and the Philippines, the two World Wars, the Cold War, the Iraq War, and today’s war on terror. He examines the discourses within America that have continuously inspired what he calls our “pathologically violent foreign policy.” The presumption that, as an exceptionally virtuous nation, the United States possesses a special right to exert power only encourages violence, Hixson concludes, and he suggests some fruitful ways to redirect foreign policy toward a more just and peaceful world.

German colonialism is a thriving field of study. From North America to Japan, within Germany, Austria and Switzerland, scholars are increasingly applying post-colonial questions and methods to the study of Germany and its culture. However, no introduction on this emerging field of study has combined political and cultural approaches, the study of literature and art, and the examination of both metropolitan and local discourses and memories. This book will fill that gap and offer a broad prelude, of interest to any scholar and student of German history and culture as well as of colonialism in general. It will be an indispensable tool for both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. .

The notion of citizenship is part of a national collective memory and a memory of individuals belonging to a specific geographical, historical and cultural context. The volume seeks to investigate the importance of women's relationship with citizenship and nationality from a diachronic perspective analysing different forms of writing in various European contexts. Many themes intersect in the different essays that comprise the volume, including the construction of female identity through religious ideology, the importance of translation and cultural studies as a source of feminine knowledge, and the relationship between public life and private domain within the multiculturalism of Europe. The intersection between national identity, women's writings and cultural difference surfaces in many essays and demonstrates how the notion of a necessary translation between cultures has been central for women authors since the seventeenth century.