Gender, War and Popular Culture

This research deals with the interconnectedness of popular culture, world politics and gender. It is situated within the Popular Culture and World Politics field of study, which has examined the importance of popular artifacts such as films, video games, comics, etc. in shaping international political events. It also contributes to the feminist research in international relations by recognizing the crucial role played by gender in international relations. More specifically, it explores the multiple interactions between gender and conflict, following Cynthia Enloe's assertion that the personal is political is international.

Empirically, the focus of this project is on films and videos. It examines the significance of these popular and visual media for the gendered representation of armed conflict. At the heart of the investigation is the question of how gender is represented in popular culture and in relation to war and militarization, and more specifically, how militaristic ideas and beliefs become embedded in our everyday lives. To answer these research questions, I mainly work with visual methods and film analysis within a feminist post-structural framework.

This doctoral thesis is divided into several thematic areas.

• A first article, already published, deals with women involved in political violence and examines the representation of Kurdish women fighters in French films. It discusses how their struggle is simplified and instrumentalized within the Kurdish freedom movement, contributing to gender essentialism, nationalism and Islamophobia.
• The second article is dedicated to the TikTok videos posted by Ukrainian soldiers at the onset of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. It examines several TikTok videos posted by soldiers at the beginning of the conflict and reads them in the context of the upheaval of gender neo-traditionalism underway in Ukraine and against the conceptual framework of militarized masculinity. It concludes that while the soldiers' portrayals challenge models of military masculinity, they do not completely disrupt the gender order.
• The third article is in preparation.