Professor Jennifer Ngaire Heuer recently published a chapter in the new book, Gender and Citizenship in Historical and Transnational Perspective, edited by Rachel Fuchs and Anne Epstein and published by Palgrave-MacMillan in late 2016. The title of Professor Heuer’s article was “Citizenship, the French Revolution, and the Limits of Martial Masculinity.”
The French Revolution created new and influential models of citizenship that closely associated masculinity and military service. Drawing on thousands of requests of soldiers and their families to allow veterans to return home in 1796 and 1797, Professor Heuer’s article explores the overlooked limits to these models. These limits were not only practical, but also conceptual. Civilians, both men and women, insisted on their own patriotism in sending off their loved ones or accepting the economic and emotional costs of their absence. Veterans faced difficulties in combining a desire to leave the troops with the need to prove their patriotism, and in reconciling a vision of themselves as simultaneously too weak to continue fighting and sufficiently strong to provide for needy dependents. Heuer also explores alternatives to arms-bearing as the defining aspect of citizenship, and traces how contemporaries not only emphasized the centrality of civilian labor, but also mobilized new visions of the emotional responsibilities of individuals to respond to suffering, and drew on Enlightenment ideals of social utility as a key component of citizenship.”
Professor Heuer notes that one of the book’s co-editors, “Rachel Fuchs, died shortly before the book was completed. The volume is dedicated to her, and I and the other participants emphasize our profound respect for her work.”