E-Lecture on Gender and the U.S. Imperial Culture

The department of English conducted its 27th Enrichment Lecture virtually on 22 Nov.’22. The session’s speaker was Ms Esther Wetzel, from Martin Luther University at Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. The session focused on Gender and the US Imperial Culture through a critical reading of the debates on US/ American imperialism using the lens of gender, from 1898 to 1910. It was a well-presented Talk that was divided into three sections for a broader and better understanding of the topic from an American Cultural Studies perspective.It began with the first part focusing on the notion of American manhood - and the related anxiety - which is a gendered debate. It was well-explained with pictorial examples from different time periods and situations to highlight the rhetorical strategies for approaching anti-imperialism as a gendered social movement. In the second part of her talk, the speaker discussed how White women from the US related to their embodied experience of imperial spaces in the Pacific at the turn of the 20th century. She referred to poetry and letters as sanctioned forms of female activism to understand gender in the making via gender(ed) relations in a colonial space. The last part was devoted to the Suffragist case against the background to the anti-Imperialist movement and the emergence of coalition-building. The Talk also drew comparisons between British India and US colonialism as following both similar yet very different trajectories.The session closed with a Q&A round in which the students and faculty members interacted with Ms Wetzel through an engaging set of queries, doubts and clarifications. Overall, it was an enriching session for all the participants as it gave them an opportunity to enter into a new area of research and scholarship, at the intersection of US imperial history and gender studies.