Position

Council Member, Professional Division, 2013–16

Institution

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mary Louise Roberts is emerita professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her specialization is women and gender, France, and the Second World War. Her most recent book concerns the politics of sex during the American presence in France during the Second World War. As the GIs conquered Normandy in the summer of 1944, they pursued their fantasies of having sex with French women. Such erotic contacts—including heterosexual sex, prostitution, and rape—became the focus of conflict and debate between the US military and French officials. As these debates occurred in newspapers and official correspondence, they anchored larger struggles for authority, including the breadth of American political power in Europe, and the moral role of the United States as a new global leader.