Susan Grayzel (Faculty Member is Retired, or has otherwise left the University)
Professor of History
Phone Number: (662)915-7488
Email: sgrayzel@olemiss.edu
http://history.olemiss.edu/2011/11/18/susan-r-grayzel-professor-of-history-and-interim-director-of-the-sarah-isom-center-for-women-and-gender-studies/

Key Words: Modern Europe, Women, Gender, Britain, France, World Wars

Research Description: Professor Susan R. Grayzel received her A.B. Magna cum laude with Highest Honors in History & Literature from Harvard University and M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently engaged in several research projects; the first focuses on the cultural meanings of chemical warfare and the efforts to protect civilian bodies in Europe and its overseas colonies from the Hague Conventions (1899) through World War II, with an emphasis on imperial Britain and France. This research uses one material object--the civilian gas mask--as way to think about the links between the First and Second World Wars and the lives of civilians and combatants. A second ongoing project in partnership with Dr. Lucy Noakes of the University of Brighton (UK) examines gender, memory, and war through an analysis of civil defence in twentieth-century Britain, from its origins in the First World War through the Cold War. This latter project is being funded by an ACLS collaborative research grant in 2014-16. Other research interests include Science/Technology and War--she co-taught an honors section of History 399 on this topic with Prof. Susan Pedigo of the Chemistry Department in 2014--and gender and war--she is also in preliminary stages of a study of how women saw themselves as active and passive citizens during the Blitz. Grayzel is the author of Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), which won the British Council Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies in 2000, and Women and the First World War (Longman, 2002), a global history. 2012 saw the publication of two books: At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge University Press) and The First World War: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford St. Martins) for the Bedford Series in History and Culture. In addition, she is the co-editor with Philippa Levine of Gender, Labour, War and Empire: Essays on Modern Britain (Palgrave, 2009) and has published numerous shorter pieces in academic journals including 20th Century British History; The Journal of Modern History; and The Journal of Women�s History, and in several collections of essays. She teaches graduate courses on the cultural and social history of modern European and its colonies as well as on race, class, and gender, and on the world wars. In addition to teaching the introductory survey in European history, her undergraduate classes regularly include History 359 (Europe in the Age of Imperialism and World War); History 362 (The Second World War: The History of a Global Conflict), History 372 (Modern Britain); History 380 (Society and the Sexes in Modern Europe); and History 450 (Research Seminar in European History). She is currently teaching an honors section of the lecture course History 309 on the First World War as a Modern Global Conflict and developing one on War in the Age of Cinema.

Honors Theses:

Keiser, Danielle (2017) How to Be a Girl: The Discourse of Compulsory Heterosexuality, Desire, and Adolescent Female Sexuality in Seventeen and Cosmopolitan Magazines from the Late 20th Century. (full text)

Rychlak, Susanna (2014) Explaining the Decline in Fertility Rates in Post-War Italy. (full text)

Forster, Christine Elizabeth (2008) "Martine's World: Examining Gender Roles, Girlhood and Nostalgia in Modern Day France"

Beeman, Lindsay Blaire (2007) "The Limits of Laïcité: Islam and the Headscarf Issue in France"

McMillen, Stephanie (2007) "The Political and Social Impact of Women's Suffrage in Spain c. 1931-1939"

McMillen, Stephanie Lorraine (2006) The Political and Social Impact of Women's Suffrage on the Spanish Civil War

Roe, Mary Elizabeth (2006) "Ils en ont parle"