Fifteen Eighty Four

In this video, author Dorit Geva discusses her novel approach to studying the gender politics of military service in France and the United States.

She emphasizes some key parallels between the two countries in their implementation of military conscription systems which offered family-based exemptions, and also discusses some ongoing problems with the American draft system today.

Dorit Geva is the author of Conscription, Family, and the Modern State (2013). She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University. She received a PhD in sociology at New York University. Geva was the Vincent Wright Fellow in Comparative Politics at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (2006–7), and spent four years as a Harper Schmidt Fellow in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago (2007–11) teaching social theory in the College Core. She is a member of the American Sociological Association, the Council for European Studies, the American Political Science Association, ATGENDER (the European Association for Gender Research, Education and Documentation), and the Social Science History Association.

Article Feature Photo: Expert Infantry via Creative Commons.