Marketing The Military Will Be Topic Of Talk At Ithaca College
ITHACA, NY—An expert on military recruitment marketing efforts will deliver the annual Marjorie Fortunoff Mayrock Lecture in History at Ithaca College on Wednesday, Feb. 20. Beth Bailey will present “Today’s Army: Is It Your Bag? Advertising, Recruiting, and the All-Volunteer Force in the Early 1970s” at 5:30 p.m. in Textor 102. Her talk is free and open to the public.
A professor of history at Temple University, Bailey is currently focusing her research on the social and cultural history of recruiting the all-volunteer Army. In an article in the “Journal of American History,” she analyzed the move in the 1970s from a military system based on the obligations of male citizenship to one that relied on sophisticated marketing campaigns that pinpointed the supposed psychological needs of America’s youth. She noted that for three decades, the Army’s “Be All You Can Be” campaign recruited with promises of individual opportunity: money for college, marketable skills, achievement, adventure, personal transformation. In March 2003, however, as American military forces moved toward Baghdad, the Army’s television commercials began evoking a tradition of heroism and sacrifice.
Bailey is the author of the books “Sex in the Heartland: Politics, Culture, and the Sexual Revolution” and “From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in 20th Century America,” coauthor of “The Columbia Guide to America in the 1960s,” and coeditor of “America in the 70s” and “A History of Our Time.” She has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and National Humanities Center.
Begun in 1979, the Marjorie Fortunoff Mayrock Lecture Series in History is funded by Elliot Mayrock ’73 in memory of his mother. For more information, contact Jonathan Ablard, assistant professor of history, at jablard@ithaca.edu.
Originally published in News Releases: Marketing The Military Will Be Topic Of Talk At Ithaca College.
