ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to addresses memorial sculpture, in particular the approximately 400 figurative sculptures of American soldiers that constitute the majority of sculptural First World War memorials in the United States. It demonstrates how the fighting and vigilant poses of US soldiers in First World War memorials similarly conferred agency on their white subjects, asserting their physically capable presence in interwar society while failing to represent the manhood of black veterans. Keene provides an overview of the competing accounts for why First World War soldiers were nicknamed doughboys: "Some historians trace the name's origins to 1854, when infantrymen along the Texas border cleaned their pipes with a 'dough-like' pipe clay and lived in adobe buildings. The memorials discussed all maintained a judicious balance between the real and ideal and between expressing romanticized and ambivalent attitudes toward war.
