Over There

“... Over There quite uniquely engages an in-between heretofore almost entirely alien to scholarly inquiry: the volume focuses on the moments when and places where the U.S. military and foreign local populations encounter one another professionally, politically, romantically, and sexually within and around American military installations abroad. The volume is disturbingly timely... [and] will surely draw a lot of attention from students and scholars of military matters and their global character, critical approaches to gender and ethnicity, comparative sociology and history...” - Sabine Frühstück, Journal of World History

“I very much enjoyed this book and have already recommended it for the course our department teaches on war, peace, and society. The important work on Empire as an on-going discourse done by Höhn and Moon and their contributors will be useful to anyone teaching courses on the politics of Empire, gender and the military, and war and peace studies, to name only a few possibilities.” - Sara Buttsworth, International History Review

“This excellent and intellectually stimulating collection offers a nuanced interpretation of American military endeavour since 1945, demonstrates the social and economic impact of the bases on civilian populations as the military presence expanded and contracted, and successfully lays out the basis for how the U.S. military constitutes an “empire.”” - Angela Wanhalla, Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History

“Over There is a splendid book. Maria Höhn and Seungsook Moon are themselves experienced investigators into the multi-layerings of U.S. military influence in Germany and South Korea. Here they have combined their gender-smart research with that of insightful contributors to offer us fresh understandings of how German, Korean, and Japanese women and men see the American bases in their midst and cope with U.S. policies designed to make them complicit. I have learned a lot from Over There.” - Cynthia Enloe, author of Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War

“This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary collection makes critically visible the sprawling network of U.S. military bases in two inseparable ways. First, base societies are revealed to be diverse social landscapes in which global questions of sovereignty and the relations of unequal nation-states have been deeply imprinted on everyday life. Second, the book powerfully identifies gendered and sexual politics as central to the construction, and contestation, of the U.S. military presence. Richly attuned to local variation and perception, resistance and historical change, these essays offer an inspiring agenda for globalized histories of gender and U.S. militarization.” - Paul A. Kramer, author of The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines

“. . . [T]his is a tremendously valuable book, brimming with new information and unique insights. All students of the global American military presence from World War II through the present will want to consult its essays. One hopes the authors will continue and expand upon their work in this burgeoning and interdisciplinaryfriendly field, and inspire others to follow their lead.” - Michael Cullen Green, Pacific Affairs

“Over There provides us with an important analytic framework and reminds us that commanding officers must respond to and manage the real human needs of all those who come in contact with American military institutions. How this is done tells us much about the nature of U.S. power.” - John Willoughby, Journal of Military History

“[T]his is an important contribution to the study of empires, especially US imperialism. Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.” - G. B. Osborne, Choice

“Maria Höhn and Seungsook Moon’s edited volume, Over There, presents valuable new scholarship on the local politics and gendered relations that constitute and undergird this vast military empire. ...the collection contains valuable essays on gender, race, class, and the U.S. military. It successfully positions U.S. military bases as key sites of U.S. empire and challenges scholars to work comparatively and recognize variation as they document the history of U.S. military bases abroad.” - Jana K. Lipman, Journal of American History

“This book gives a nuanced analysis of the power relations of the American empire and militarised masculinity within it... It is ... a most enlightening comparative overview of the impact of American military bases in the three most important host countries of the US military empire.” - Trond Ove Tøllefsen, European Review of History