About
Area of Interest
I examine the ways that Imperial and National responses to stigmatized illness (for my purposes Syphilis-VD) in the British Imperial Army can be used to analyze Dominion feelings of Imperial belonging and hierarchy during the First World War. Specifically, I examine the administrative, medical, and social decisions/policies of wartime ad-hoc VD hospitals on the British Isles. These VD Hospitals are used to illustrate the tense political, cultural, and social interactions between citizens from the British Isles (primarily women are targeted here) and Canadian soldiers in these hospital 'zones of contact.' Sexually transmitted infections have traditionally been conceptualized as a disease of the 'other.' When outbreaks have occurred in the western world, they have usually been accompanied by a social script that blames an insidious 'outsider' or enemy for spreading VD to innocent parties. In the case of the Imperial Army this rhetoric has important consequences. Canadians who had always seen themselves as British also tried to find the 'other' to blame this outbreak on- but this was complicated by the fact that the closest 'other' available on the British Isles were people Canadian amdinistrators, medical staff, and soldiers had formerly thought of themselves as the same as or part of. My research focuses on the consequences of this traditional response to VD within the larger context of an Empire at war.
