When Leon Panetta lifted the ban on women in combat, Visiting Assistant Professor Cheryl Hatch’s recent photographs of women soldiers in Afghanistan were distributed worldwide. Hatch embedded with the 1st Battalion 5th Infantry Regiment 1/25 Stryker Brigade Combat Team in southern Kandahar Province. Throughout her career, she has focused on women in war zones: civilians and soldiers. In Afghanistan, she documented the work of the soldiers of the Female Engagement Team, who join the infantrymen on patrol in order to make contact with Afghan women. Hatch’s photographs have been published in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Images published in the Christian Science Monitor last year can be seen here.
March 1st 2013