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A List
4/9/07
MILITARY FAMILIES FOCUS OF SLU PROF'S NEW BOOK
CANTON - A St. Lawrence University history professor has written a new book about
the role that American military families played as ambassadors abroad during the
Cold War years.
Unofficial Ambassadors: American Military Families Overseas and the Cold War,
1946-1965, by assistant professor and Margaret Vilas Chair of History Donna
Alvah, has just been published by New York University Press.
As thousands of wives and children joined American servicemen stationed at
overseas bases in the years following World War II, the military family
represented "a friendlier, more humane side of the United States' campaign
for dominance in the Cold War. Wives in particular were encouraged to use
their feminine influence to forge ties with residents of occupied and host
nations." In this untold story of Cold War diplomacy, Alvah describes how
these "unofficial ambassadors" spread the United States' perception of itself
and its image of world order in the communities where husbands and fathers
were stationed, cultivating relationships with both local people and other
military families in private homes, churches, schools, women's clubs, shops
and other places.
Its publishers state, "Unofficial Ambassadors reminds us that, in addition
to soldiers and world leaders, ordinary people make vital contributions to
a nation's military engagements. Alvah broadens the scope of the history
of the Cold War by analyzing how ideas about gender, family, race and culture
shaped the U.S. military presence abroad."
Alvah is a graduate of the University of California at Irvine, with a master's
degree and Ph.D. from the University of California at Davis. She also has
written an essay on military families in Heidelberg 1946-1965, which will
appear in a collection titled GIs in Germany: The American Military
Presence 1945-2000 (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press), as
well as pieces in Americans at War: Society, Culture and the Homefront
and Dictionary of American History.
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More information: Humanities at St. Lawrence
Faculty Scholarship and Publications
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