CfP: Imperial Legacies of 1919

CFP Deadline for Papers and Panels: December 31, 2018
Contact: imperial1919unt@gmail.com
Conference Date: April 19-20, 2019

Roundtable participant proposal deadline: 31 January 2019
Undergraduate Student Poster competition proposal deadline: 15 February 2019

Journalist and author Shrabani Basu will provide a distinguished lecture on Indian soldiers related to her recent work: For King and Another Country (2015). Prior to the conference, she will also host a screening of Victoria and Abdul, a film based on her book of the same name. Historian of the British Empire Dr. Susan Kingsley Kent will provide the keynote address. Her esteemed works include Aftershocks: Politics and Trauma in Britain, 1918-1931 (2009); The Women’s War of 1929: Gender and Violence in Colonial Nigeria (2011) and The Global Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919 (2012).

Conference Description
The year 2019 is the perfect opportunity to analyze the global consequences of war and peace. That year marks the centenary of the Treaty of Versailles, which set the terms for peace after the First World War. Unfortunately, the meaning of “peace” was dictated largely by European Empires with limited visions for avoiding future conflict, not only in Europe but around the world. This conference will commemorate the 1919 centenary by hosting an international 2-day conference that explores the on-going legacies of war and imperialism.

Shifting our lens to colonial spaces and debates, “Imperial Legacies of 1919” explores the multiple and contending meanings of 1919. In South Asia, for example, the year 1919 was not known for international peace treaties but rather the 1919 Amritsar Massacre during which a British officer commanded troops to open fire on an unarmed crowd. This gave leading figures such as Mohandas Gandhi the moral imperative to fight against colonialism. At the same time, the year 1919 connotes important moments in anti-colonial revolutions in places like Ireland and Egypt. Meanwhile, strikes and labor activism intensified around the world in response to the Bolshevik revolution (1917) and the return of soldiers to the home front. Soldiers, veterans, and civilians coped with wartime traumas, postwar disabilities and demobilization well beyond 1919.

The terms of peace and creation of the League of Nations mandates led to the dismantling of the German, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. This meant redrawing international borders, including in the Near East, in what became known as the “Middle East” in the United States. Aerial warfare in the League of Nations mandates and during the Third Anglo-Afghan War (1919) targeted civilians with ongoing violence across the imperial world. Pan-Asian, Pan-African, Pan-Islamic and anti-colonial activists attempted to find alternative sources of unity to challenge European imperialism.

While the year 1919 holds an important place in world history, issues such as economic inequality, unstable border relations, religious and linguistic identities, veteran and civilian relations, gender inequality, and the long-term traumas of war remain harsh realities for people around the world. This conference will be a timely reflection on pressing global issues that link past and present.

Paper and Panel CFP (Deadline December 31, 2018): The conference organizers welcome individual paper or full panel submissions from junior and senior scholars at any stage of their academic career. We welcome proposals for both conventional 3-4 person panels and those that offer an unconventional approach to panel organization. Papers and panels may be on any region, theme, and topic related to “imperial legacies of 1919” but we especially welcome reflections on the following themes:

Borderlands, Labor, and Migration
Gendering War and Peace
War Psychology, Health, and Trauma
The League of Nations Mandate System
Crypto-Colonialism
Environment and Empire
Capitalism and Imperialism
Language and Identity
Anti-colonial and peace movements
Food, war, and empire
War Reporting, Media, and Memory

Those interested in presenting an individual paper should send a 250-word abstract and current CV by December 31, 2018 to imperial1919unt@gmail.com.

Prospective panels should send a 200-word panel abstract, 150 word abstracts for each paper, CVs for each panelist, and, if available, names of prospective chairs and commentators. Deadline: December 31, 2018.

Graduate Student Roundtable CFP (Deadline January 31, 2019):
We will also accept proposals for graduate students who would prefer to be considered for inclusion on one or more graduate student roundtable(s) on any time period or theme related to empire (Deadline January 15). We especially recommend this for MA students, pre-ABD PhD students, or PhD students who are exploring a new part of their research. Priority will be given to roundtable participants who engage with the themes of “identity and empire” or “war and empire.”

Graduate students who wish to be considered for the graduate student roundtable session should send a 100-200 word abstract for a 5-10 minute presentation that gives a general outline of what the scholar would like to contribute to a roundtable on war and empire. According to the AHA “The roundtable format—which can be used for the presentation of original research, work-in-progress, or discussion of professional concerns—offers short presentations, a fluid organization (not limited to the chair/presenter/commentator structure), and ample time for discussion with the audience. Roundtables foster a congenial exchange between audience and discussants.”

Graduate Student Ambassador: Kevin Broucke, UNT History, Military History Center Fellow

Undergraduate Poster Prize (Proposal deadline February 15, 2019):
Undergraduate students from all universities are encouraged to apply for a place in the undergraduate poster prize competition on any topic related to war and empire. All accepted and completed posters will be displayed at the conference.

Undergraduate students who wish to be considered for the undergraduate poster prize should send a 100-200 word description of their poster, with 1 to 3 sample images, related to any theme or topic relevant to this conference. For further guidelines on poster sessions please see: https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting/resources-and-guides/poster-resources/effective-poster-presentations Deadline for consideration: February 15, 2019

Undergraduate Student Ambassador: Savannah Donnelly, UNT History

About UNT
The conference will be hosted in the new, state-of-the-art, Union facilities at the University of North Texas. UNT is a tier-1 research university of over 35,000 students in the Dallas-Forth Worth Metropolitan area. We are conveniently located in Denton, about 30-45 minutes from the DFW airport. Denton is center of arts and music with a growing independent restaurant scene in North Texas. The conference organizers welcome and encourage the participation of LGBTQIA+ presenters.

We will also host a screening of Victoria & Abdul and a Q&A with the original book’s author, Shrabani Basu, on the evening of April 18, 2019, for UNT and interested conference participants and members of the public.

Registration Fees
Thanks to the generous support of the Charn Uswachoke International Development Fund, the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences, UNT-International and the UNT departments of History, Linguistics, Anthropology, Political Science, English and Women’s and Gender Studies, we will be able to offer discounted registration to all presenters and participants. Travel assistance is not available.

UNT undergraduate and graduate students: Free registration for panels, film screening and keynote (registration required, meals not included)

UNT Faculty in History, Anthropology, Political Science, English, Linguistics, WGST: Free registration for panels, film screening, and keynote (registration required, meals not included)

Non-UNT undergraduate and graduate students: $25 (includes all panels, invited talks, and conference meals)

Under-employed researchers/post-doc/early career: $40 (includes all panels, invited talks, and conference meals)

Tenured associate professors or equivalent: $60 (includes all panels, invited talks, and conference meals)

Full professors: $75 (includes all panels, invited talks, and conference meals)

“Conference meals” include one lunch and one dinner and are included with paid registration.

Please send all questions, inquiries, and proposals to imperial1919unt@gmail.com

CfP: Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars

Royal Military College of Canada
Kingston, Ontario
8-9 November 2018

Raising armies is more than counting people, putting them into uniform, and assigning them to formations. It was, and remains, an exceedingly complex business. It demands efficient measures and processes for recruitment and selection in voluntary military systems and equally efficient measures for registration and assignment in armies built on conscription. It demands training establishments capable of transforming factory workers and farmers into riflemen, in addition to providing them with officers, staffs, and commanders to lead them. It demands balance between the needs of the armed services, industry, and agriculture. And, often overlooked, it demands medical services to mend soldiers when wounded, and programs and pensions to look after them when demobilised. How did the the British Empire and Commonwealth mobilize manpower for the armed services, agriculture, and industry during the two world wars? And how did they care for veterans, both able-bodied and disabled, when the fighting was over?

“Manpower and the Armies of the British Empire in the Two World Wars” will bring together a diverse group of distinguished historians, junior scholars and graduate students to undertake a multifaceted examination of army mobilization for Britain, India, and the dominions. Confirmed speakers include: Gary Sheffield (University of Wolverhampton), Richard Grayson (Goldsmiths, University of London), Kent Fedorowich (University of the West of England), Peter Dennis (University of New South Wales), Jessica Meyer (University of Leeds), Kaushik Roy (Jadavpur University), Jonathan Fennell (King’s College London), Daniel Byers (Laurentian University), Ian McGibbon (Ministry of Culture and Heritage, New Zealand), Ian van der Waag (Stellenbosch University), and Meghan Fitzpatrick (Royal Military College of Canada).

The conference organizing committee solicits proposals for papers along the lines of three basic themes:
(1) recruitment/conscription and selection
(2) training, employment and the experience of soldiers
(3) demobilization and veterans’ care.
We would also welcome papers that examine manpower in relation to culture, class, gender, race, or disability.

Proposals should include a 200-300-word abstract accompanied by a one-page CV. Proposals should be emailed to Symposium-Colloque2018@rmc-cmr.ca no later than 22 June 2018. Cornell University Press will publish the proceedings of the conference.

CfP: Marianne in War and Peace, 1913-1923. The French Republic in the era of the Great War

‘Marianne in War and Peace, 1913-1923. The French Republic in the era of the Great War’. A special issue of French History

The study of the First World War continues to thrive as the centennial commemorations of the conflict draw to a close. In large part, the current vitality of First World War studies stems from the cultural and comparative turns taken by the historiography since the 1980s. Anxious to dispense with national paradigms to interrogate the broader and transnational currency of the wartime systems of representations, historians of the Great War often elected to focus on the cultural dimensions of the conflict. Historians of France played and continue to play a critical role in the renewal of this field (Hanna & Horne, 2016; Smith, 2016).

In France itself, a long-lasting controversy over the existence and significance of a “culture de guerre” has framed the analysis of wartime mobilization as an alternative between consent and coercion. In 1998, this important debate about the respective importance of patriotic mobilization and state-enforced discipline degenerated into a full-blown academic dispute. Two decades on, it still simmers and occasionally boils over to the detriment of scholars and scholarship alike.

This controversy has reinforced the domestic outlook of the historiographical debate in France and accounts, partly at least, for its limited engagement with foreign historiographies. Likewise, French historians have relatively neglected the colonial and imperial dimensions of the conflict. Most significantly, the debate is often artificially framed as an opposition between cultural and social historians. As a result, our understanding of the politics of wartime mobilization and demobilization remains fragmented, despite the rejuvenation and dynamism of French political history as a whole.

This guest-edited special issue of French History sets out to address this problem. It aims to showcase innovative perspectives on the French experience of the First World War. It will focus on the political dimensions of military operations and on the contested process of social and cultural mobilization. It will also consider how France and the French came to terms with the fraught process of demobilization, and dealt with the multifaceted legacies of the conflict across the country and its empire.

Proposals should be submitted in the first instance to Pierre Purseigle (p.purseigle@warwick.ac.uk). They should include the proposed title of the article, its summary (500 words max.), and a one-page C.V. The deadline for submission of the proposals is 15 November 2017. Full manuscripts of selected articles (8-10,000 words max.) will be due by 1 February 2018.

Please note that each selected article will be peer-reviewed in accordance with the journal’s editorial procedure. The decision to publish will rest with French History’s editorial team.

References:
M. Hanna and J. Horne, ‘France and the Great War on Its Centenary’, French Historical Studies, 39: 2, April 2016, pp. 233–259
L. V. Smith, ‘France, the Great War, and the “Return to Experience”’, The Journal of Modern History, 88: 2, June 2016, pp.380–415.