The Problem with the “Home Front”: Rethinking a Conceptual Category in 20th-Century War

According  to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term “home front” was an invention of the First World War, when for the first time “home” or “domestic” became adjectives used to modify the military term “front.”  The phrase and its conceptual power has had a long after life. This talk begins with the question: is the “home front” a useful category to understand modern war? It then explores its utility in the context of the First World War and its long unwinding.

Susan R. Grayzel is a Professor of Modern European History at Utah State University; author of books including Women’s Identities At War: Gender,  Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War; At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids & Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz and most recently, The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War. She is a visiting researcher at the Centre for Culture and Mind in Spring 2025.