We Are a College at War weaves together the individual World War II experiences of students and faculty at the all-female Rockford College (now Rockford University) in Rockford, Illinois, to draw a broader picture of the role American women and college students played during this defining period in U.S. history.  It uses the Rockford community’s letters, speeches, newspaper stories, and personal recollections to demonstrate how American women during the Second World War claimed the right to be everywhere—in factories and other traditionally male workplaces, and even on the front lines—and links their efforts to the rise of feminism and the fight for women’s rights in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Mary Weaks-Baxter, the Hazel Koch Professor of English at Rockford University, is the author of Reclaiming the American Farmer: The Reinvention of a Regional Mythology in Twentieth-Century Southern Writing.

Christine Bruun is a professor emerita of psychology and a former department chair at Rockford University.

Catherine Forslund, a professor of history at Rockford University, is the author of Anna Chennault: Informal Diplomacy and Asian Relations.

“This book provides welcome insight into an overlooked aspect of World War II—its connection to higher education. Focusing on Rockford College, the alma mater of Jane Addams, and providing a national context, the authors provide a fascinating story of how the war changed this women’s college, and how college students, staff, and faculty contributed to the war effort in diverse ways.” —Susan Hartmann, author of The Home Front and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s
 
“Mary Weaks-Baxter, Christine Bruun, and Catherine Forslund bring to center stage the half of the Greatest Generation that usually gets short shrift in the history books, and show how these women—heroic and patriotic in their own right—stepped up in a time of war. They also clearly demonstrate how, whether consciously or not, these women carried on the legacy of early twentieth-century suffragists, and sowed the seeds that flowered into the feminist movement in the 1970s.”—Emily Yellin, author of Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II
 
“We Are a College at War succeeds in uncovering many ways that Rockford women responded to the calls of their college, and their country, to support the war. Documenting the range of their responses, this book enriches historians’ understanding of the war era and provides a useful case study.—The Councilor: The Journal of the Illinois Council for the Social Studies