Alexander Macaulay was a cadet at The Citadel when the first woman enrolled there. He is an associate professor of history at Western Carolina University.
Engagedly written and fast paced, this is a first-class book worthy
of being read by a wide audience.--Joe P. Dunn "South Carolina
Historical Magazine"
In this highly engaging and perceptive study, Alexander Macaulay
challenges the characterization of The Citadel as a hidebound
southern anachronism. Macaulay's post-Word War II Citadel is more a
reflection of the larger society than a reaction against it, an
institution forced to reconsider its gendered and racialized
notions of citizenship as the ground shifted beneath its
feet.--Kari Frederickson "author of The Dixiecrat Revolt and the
End of the Solid South, 1932-1968"
Macaulay presents this astute account of South Carolina's military
college, The Citadel, within the framework of masculinity and shows
how concerns over manliness fueled both the school's leaders' and
its students' ideologies and actions and reflected American,
southern, and South Carolinian anxieties about the tumultuous
social and cultural transformations that followed World War II.
This is an authoritative institutional history based on Macaulay's
perceptive understanding of his alma mater.--H. Michael Gelfand
"American Historical Review"
This is a story that is bigger than one small school in a southern
town. It is, as it should be, the story of America coming to terms
with its past. From the Cold War to civil rights, from Vietnam to
the feminist movement, The Citadel found itself on the front lines
of America's culture wars. Thankfully, in Macaulay, we have found a
historian of consummate skill to analyze those conflicts and their
effects on the modern South.--Steve Estes "author of Ask and Tell:
Gay and Lesbian Veterans Speak Out"
In spite of being a recent Citadel graduate, Macaulay presents a
remarkably objective look at this uniquely isolationist collegiate
culture and its often-visceral reaction to the progressiveness of
the outside world. A must read for any student of the modern South
or civil-military relations.--Choice
Much more than an institutional history, this book's most
significant contribution is to show how such a deeply gendered and
racialized place responded to and helped shape American arguments
about gender and citizenship.--Journal of Southern History
Writing as both a historian and a Citadel graduate, Macaulay
capably describes the experiences of cadets and school officials
who struggled with social, political, and cultural changes in
postwar America. His discussion of the shifting attitudes toward
masculinity in the 1960s is especially convincing and clearly shows
how The Citadel reflected national debates on a local
level.--Southern Historian
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