CfP: State of Emergency: Architecture, Urbanism, and World War One, SAH, Providence, 2019

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72nd Annual International Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians
April 24-28, 2019 / Providence, Rhode Island

CFP: State of Emergency: Architecture, Urbanism, and World War One
Session Chairs: Erin Sassin, Middlebury College, and Sophie Hochhäusl, Harvard University

“Far greater than the infamy of war is that of men who want to forget that it ever took place, although they exulted in it at the time,” wrote Austrian journalist Karl Kraus in The Last Days of Mankind, revealing humanity’s abyss on the eve of World War I. With the centennial of the conclusion of the First World War approaching, we seek to reassess what this cataclysmic global conflict meant for architecture and urbanism from a human, social, and economic perspective.

Histories of design have often emphasized wartime advances in mechanization and standardization that opened new fields of inquiry in the aftermath of WWI and blurred the meaning of what constituted architecture. Yet, the war also prompted the rapid development of military-architectural knowledge impacting civilian populations at great human cost. As mechanized trench warfare came to the brink of collapse, hyper-development was accompanied by the re-emergence of systems of underdevelopment, including barter and subsistence economies, as well as mobile kitchens, field railways, and do-it-yourself objects made in the state of emergency.

In this session, we seek to imbed the formation of architectural networks and institutions (such as the Glass Chain or Vkhutemas) in broader histories of wartime architectural production advanced by governments, institutions, organizations, or citizens in order to interrogate the complex and often violent relationship between front and home front. We particularly welcome papers that address regions impacted by WWI beyond Western Europe analyzing how architectural agents and institutions mitigated, exacerbated, or actively resisted complicity in this human tragedy. We seek contributions that consider the impact of the ephemeral and the creation of makeshift architecture by women and children in the transformation of wartime urbanism. Finally, we encourage projects that engage economic theories of the war and relate them to post-war debates on cooperation, socialization, and democracy.

The 72nd Annual International Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians will take place on April 24-28, 2019 in Providence, Rhode Island. Submission of abstracts begins on April 3, 2018. Applicants will submit a 300-word abstract and CV through the online portal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Please do not send these materials directly to the panel co-chairs. Submission of proposals to the SAH online portal closes at 11:59 on June 5, 2018.

FWW Play: ‘Dear Chocolate Soldier’, SOFO, 6 June 2018, 19.00

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A new First World War play, ‘Dear Chocolate Soldier. A docudrama based on the letters (1916-1918) of Bombardier Edwin Hassall’, presented by Historia Theatre Company, edited and arranged by Kate Glover and directed by Kenneth Michaels will tour from 31 May 2018.

On Wednesday 6 June, it will show at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum (SOFO), Woodstock.

It is June 1916. A 6 year old girl, Joan Burbridge, watches as her father wraps up a packet of chocolate for the brave soldiers at the front. A thought strikes her: ‘How will the soldier know the chocolate is from me?’ Her father obligingly writes on the packet: ‘From Little Joan, Whiterock, Wadebridge, Cornwall’.

Six weeks letter, a green field envelope arrives, addressed to Little Joan. Inside is a letter, sent direct from the fighting at the Somme, by Bombardier Edwin Hassall of Leek, Staffordshire. The story of the letters, from ‘The Chocolate Soldier’ to Little Joan, takes us to Armistice, and is told movingly and amusingly, by three actors, in a cabaret style performance with poetry and popular songs from the period.

For further details of the tour and to book tickets, please see here and also download the poster: DEAR CHOCOLATE SOLDIER Leek and Tour Leaflet

Event: Seeing War: War and Cultural Memory

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Friday 25 May, St. Luke’s Chapel, TORCH, University of Oxford

The day will include a morning postgraduate seminar run by Laura Harrison, Rob Page, and Chris Kempshall, with readings circulated in advance. The afternoon includes a panel on Visualising War, with the photographer Jason Larkin discussing his project Past Perfect and the writer Robert Schultz talking about his collaborative project on memory of the American Civil War, War Memoranda. The keynote from Marita Sturken (whose work we read in our first seminar in Oxford) is on 9/11 memory, considering the the 9/11 memorial and the Flight 93 memorial comparatively. There’ll be a closing roundtable as usual featuring Mike Hammond. The venue this time is the lovely St. Luke’s Chapel on the Radcliffe Humanities site in Oxford.

The day is free and open to all and includes lunch, coffee and a reception. Please feel free to tweet about the event in advance using the hashtag #seeingwar

Registration is open; please register here.

Schedule
10.00: Coffee and Registration

10.15-12.00: Workshop led by ECRs – Rob Page, Laura Harrison, Chris Kempshall

12.00-13.00: Lunch

13.00-13.15: Opening Remarks – Alice Kelly

13.15-14.30: Panel: Visualising Conflict – Jason Larkin and Robert Schultz, chaired by Dominic Davies

14.30-15.00: Coffee

15.00-16.00: Keynote – Marita Sturken, chaired by Lucinda Borkett-Jones

16.00-17.00: Closing Roundtable – Marita Sturken, Michael Hammond, chaired by Alice Kelly

17.00: Wine Reception

For those of you on Twitter, check out the Twitter Takeover by Postgraduates and ECRs happening every week in the run up to this debate, featuring the Bright Young Things of war and memory studies. So far we’ve had week-long takeovers by Hanna Smyth, Louise Bell, Rob Page, Laura Harrison, and currently up is Jan Tattenberg. Still to come are Chris Kempshall, Eleanor Rowley and Doreen Pastor. Follow the conversation @cultcommwar

Call for Graduate Student Volunteers for an Oxford University WW1 National Digitization Project: Lest We Forget

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Lest We Forget is a nationwide initiative, based in Oxford’s Faculty of English, which aims to record the stories, objects, and memories of the First World War. As part of this initiative, we invite local schools, libraries, and museums across the UK to hold their own WW1 Digital Collection Days, where members of the public can bring in their First World War objects and stories for digitization. The documented stories and objects will be uploaded to a free-to-use Oxford University database, where they will be freely accessible to all members of the public to discover, research, and learn.

And we are looking for Graduate Student Volunteers to help us run these important events! (Graduate Students with research interests in the First World War are particularly welcome, as are those with broad interests in twentieth century history and/or literature more generally).

This is a great opportunity to add to your CV! You will gain excellent experience in public engagement, event organization, and even teaching (as our work often involves presenting to/engaging with students); you can also gain experience in graphic design, as we are always delighted to have new and creative poster ideas! You will also be among the first researchers to view countless incredible objects relating to the First World War—letters, medals, diaries, scrapbooks, photographs…)

Interested? Get in touch with us! at ww1collections@it.ox.ac.uk OR, by directly emailing Lest We Forget Project Manager Dr. Nancy Martin at: nancy.martin@linacre.ox.ac.uk

CfP: As Wars End…: Civilian Repercussions, Societal Reconstructions, and Geopolitical Reverberations

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The Network for the Study of Civilians, Soldiers, and Society (NSCSS)

The Network for the Study of Civilians, Soldiers, and Society (NSCSS), based at the Gregg Centre of the University of New Brunswick, is planning a workshop-style conference entitled “As Wars End…” for 19-21 June 2019. Through pre-circulated papers, the conference seeks to reconsider, from a wide range of geographic and temporal perspectives, the character, dynamics, and legacies of military conflicts as they came to a close. For some, the end of war meant liberation, but for others, such as civilians involved in colonial conflicts, it meant occupation and subjugation. The end of wars does not therefore always mean the restoration of peace and a return to ‘normalcy’. The conference thus seeks to bring together scholars to re-examine the following overlapping questions, issues, and themes:

Civilian repercussions: For many civilians the end of wars brought little peace. Devastation, displacement, occupation, and disease frequently accompanied conflicts, their consequences profound and complicated by variations in class, gender, age, ethnicity, and geography. Even for those not living in conflict zones the challenges of readjustment, incorporating veterans into everyday life, and dealing with the social and psychological consequences of conflict proved enduring and even life-long. Papers that address these and other dimensions of civilian experience in the fraught and often incomplete transition from war to peace are welcome.
Societal reconstructions: The long-term social impact of military conflicts take numerous forms. Possible paper topics might include: decolonization; the rise of civil rights movements; demobilization and the civilian reintegration of soldiers; economic recovery; the writing and rewriting of constitutions; the civilian application of military technologies; and, the reconsideration of citizenship and political participation.
Geopolitical reverberations: From the Thirty Years’ War through the Second World War and beyond, the outcomes of wars and other military conflicts invariably have had geopolitical reverberations for victors and vanquished, allies and neutrals alike. This theme explores the geopolitical implications of ending wars, including: shifting alliances; emergence of new powers; decolonization; new international institutions and legal regimes; imperial powers in decline; and, new international economic arrangements. Proposals that address these examples of geopolitical reverberations or related themes are welcomed.

The organizing committee welcomes papers that examine these issues from ancient times to the contemporary period, that focus on a wide variety of geographic locations, and that reflect a wide range of historical approaches and perspectives. Please send paper abstracts (up to 250 words), a one-page CV, and contact information to Dr. Colin Grittner (Department of History, University of New Brunswick) at colin.grittner@unb.ca by 31 August 2018. Please note that for those whose abstracts are accepted, we request completed working papers for circulation by 15 May 2019.

Talk: Music and Memory: composer Jonathan Dove in conversation with Dr Kate Kennedy

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5:30pm to 7:00pm, Friday 27 April 2018
Lecture Theatre 3, Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG

In this conversation, composer Jonathan Dove will talk to Dr Kate Kennedy (University of Oxford) about the relationship of his music to war and remembrance. Jonathan Dove has written works commemorating armed conflict (In Damascus and To An Unknown Soldier) and works invoking collective memory more broadly, as in his TV opera When She Died, a reflection on the death of Princess Diana. The conversation will be illustrated with musical examples.

This event launches the Aural Commemoration strand of the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series 2017-18 Post-War: Commemoration, Reconstruction, Reconciliation, which brings together academics, creative practitioners, field-workers and policy experts to explore and compare the ways in which commemorative practices across cultures both contribute to and challenge post-war reconstruction and reconciliation.

This event is free to attend but registration is essential. Please register here.
Event poster: Music and Memory1

CfP: The Book as Cure: Bibliotherapy and Literary Caregiving from the First World War to the Present

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This one-day conference, part of the annual programme of the History of Books and Reading (HOBAR) research collaboration at The Open University, will take place in the Gordon Room, Senate House, University of London, on 14 September 2018. It brings together early career researchers and advanced scholars with practitioners, policy makers, charities, and representatives from the culture and heritage industries to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue about the curative power of reading during and after the war. What is the legacy of wartime bibliotherapy? How is that curative power understood now? How was it understood in 1914? How has it been managed since in the voluntary sector and in institutions? In what ways does the legacy of First World War bibliotherapy remain active in contemporary policy-making in the charity sector, and in work with veterans and settled refugees?

Keynote speakers:
Jane Potter (Oxford Brookes University)
Peter Leese (University of Copenhagen)

Led by three members of The Open University’s Department of English & Creative Writing, Siobhan Campbell, Sara Haslam, and Edmund King, this event will contribute to and shape understanding of the therapeutic importance of books across disciplines and help to generate further focused research in the Humanities and beyond.

Proposals of 300 words for 20-minute papers by Friday, 4 May 2018 are welcomed from PhD students, ECRs and established scholars working in the field. Topics include: the healing book; creative and expressive writing interventions; reading, writing and trauma; authorbased studies on literary caregiving of any type; hospital, prison, and asylum reading/libraries and mental health/wellness; curating generative archives; documenting resilience and identifying outcomes.

Contact Info:
Please send abstracts to the conference organisers: Siobhan.Campbell@open.ac.uk; Sara.Haslam@open.ac.uk; and Edmund.King@open.ac.uk

Further information here.