This book is the outcome of a successful workshop held in Leeds in September 2003 and explores
the effects of World War II on the representation of gender in post-war literature film and
popular culture juxtaposing Western European experience with US Soviet and Japanese. It aims
to outline the different ways in which these representations evolved in post-war attempts both
to re-establish social order and reconstruct national identity. It gives the reader an overview
of the similarities and differences that have emerged in the representation of war and gender
in different cultures and media as a result of social expectations political change and
individual artistic innovation. The essays are linked by their concern with three key
questions: how are emotion and gender represented in relation to the experience of war what is
the impact of war on the dynamic between the genders and as the memory of war recedes is it
possible to identify chronological shifts in the artistic response to the conflict?
