Category Archives: WW1

CfP: “Ukutshona kukaMendi”: The Mendi Centenary Conference

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Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, 28-30th March 2017

This conference commemorates the sinking of the SS Mendi that occurred during the First World War, on 21 February 1917. It pays tribute to the South African Native Labour Contingent, and the men on the Mendi who died en route to fight for their dignity and human rights through service to the war effort.

The conference seeks to explore the struggle against oppression and dispossession, and particularly against the Natives Land Act of 1913, as a reason why these men left their homes in rural South Africa to contribute to the war effort. It also aims to examine the roles played by black intellectuals such as Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi, Solomon T. Plaatje, and John Dube in the recruitment of men to the South African Native Labour Contingent, and in dealing with the aftermath of the Mendi tragedy.

One of the themes we are very keen to traverse is black southern African perspectives on the sea. While a great deal has been theorized about ocean voyages and the littoral zone in the fields of Indian Ocean Studies and Black Atlantic Studies, there is very little existing research on black southern African perspectives on the sea.

From a literary and cultural studies perspective we would also like to consider the extent to which poetry related to the Mendi could fit within or perhaps disrupt a canon of World War 1 poetry, which has thus far focused mainly on English/ European writings.

We welcome contributions from established academics and researchers, but we are also extremely interested in how a new generation of South African writers, scholars, performance poets, artists, activists and intellectuals are reimagining and making sense of the Mendi story. To this latter end we will have panels for performance poetry, and wish to encourage participation and interaction from students. Artists and poets are invited to address the gathering through poetry, artistic work or discussion of artistic work, on any of the topics related to the conference theme.

What role does the rich history of our country play in understanding where we are today, and where does the story of the Mendi fit within that history?

We welcome abstracts (300 words max) for 20 minute papers/ presentations/ performances on any of the following topics related to the conference theme:

the story of the Mendi and its relevance to the present;
the history of the South African Native Labour Contingent;
the Mendi story and its relation to black military history in the 20th century;
“putting on the uniform”: black military history and first and second world wars;
black perspectives on the sea, the oceanic, and the littoral zone in southern Africa – we wish to explore this neglected topic through examining literature, orature, the visual arts, performance art, and history;
the Mendi and black intellectual and poetic traditions;
the place of poetry related to the Mendi in the canon of WW1 poetry;
Lost in translation: translating and retranslating poetry such as Mqhayi’s from indigenous languages into English;
“did they dance?”: historical “truth”, historiography, and the work of imagination;
the Mendi and the politics of commemoration in South Africa;
creative responses: the role of the arts in commemorating the Mendi;
the Mendi and issues of compensation.

Please submit your abstracts or proposals by 30 September 2016 to: mendi2017@gmail.com

Conference website here.

CFP: Object Matters: Making Memory: material and visual culture of commemoration in Ireland c.1800 – 2016

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National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square, Dublin 2
13-15 October 2016
Funded by the Irish Research Council ‘New Foundations’ Scheme

Deadline for proposals 12 July, 2016

Proposals of c.300 words accompanied by a short CV are invited for 20-minute papers related to the material and visual culture of commemoration in Ireland from c.1800 to the present day. Please email to makingmemory@ncad.ie.

This cross-disciplinary conference will address how objects, images, artworks, buildings, spaces and bodies have worked and been understood in the creation and maintenance of public and private memory in Ireland since c.1800. While topics might include key personages and events such as World War 1, the Irish Civil War and the Manchester Martyrs, we also encourage proposals that address the commemoration of lesser-known histories.

Commemorative culture might encompass events such as ceremonies and parades, artefacts such as souvenirs or artworks, institutional practices such as collecting and exhibiting, particular sites such as commemorative buildings, graveyards and ceremonial spaces, and private modes of visual and material remembrance such as domestic mnemonic objects.

The conference should contribute to our understanding of how ideas about the past have been visualised, manufactured, articulated, materialised, distributed and performed.

Proposals are welcomed from researchers and practitioners across various fields including Art practice, Archaeology, Anthropology, Geography, Architectural History, History of Design, Material Culture, Visual Culture, Memory Studies, Museum Studies, Art History, History of Media, Cultural History, Sociology and Critical theory. A publication is planned based on the conference proceedings. For the proceedings of the first Object Matters conference Making 1916: material and visual culture of the Easter Rising, see http://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/products/60501.

Deadline July 12, 2016. Participants will be notified by July 22.

Conference Convenor Dr. Lisa Godson, National College of Art & Design
Conference Administrator Kate Butler, BL

Supported by the National College of Art and Design + University College Dublin Centre for Creative Arts and Critical Cultures / National Gallery of Ireland/Irish Museums Association / Irish Architecture Foundation / GradCAM

Enquiries and proposals should be directed to: makingmemory@ncad.ie

Film screening: 66 Men of Grandpont 1914-1918, 22 June 2016, 14.00, Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College

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A film screening of 66 Men of Grandpont 1914-1918: A Short Documentary Film by Simon Haynes and Liz Woolley will take place on Wednesday 22 June 2016, from 14.00-15.45 in the Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College.

DVD cover, front, back and spine

66 Men of Grandpont 1914-1918 is a community history project, which commemorates the 66 men who are named on the First World War memorial in St Matthew’s Church in Grandpont, South Oxford.

The project, which has been part-funded by the University’s Community Fund, has involved the development of a large website, a touring exhibition, a poppy trail around the streets of Grandpont and, most recently, a 40-minute documentary film which was launched at the Town Hall recently. The film explores the impact of the First World War on one small and ordinary suburban community, but also describes Oxford during the period and emphasises the links between local and international history. It is therefore of interest not only to local residents, but to a much wider audience as well. One of the project coordinators’ additional aims is to provide a model for other groups wishing to carry out similar projects, by explaining how they went about the research.

The Rt. Hon. Vere Sidney Tudor Harmsworth Postdoctoral Research Fellowship on the History of the United States and World War One

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The Rothermere American Institute (RAI) and Corpus Christi College seek to appoint a stipendiary Junior Research Fellow on the United States and World War One, tenable for three years with effect from 1 October 2016.

The Fellowship forms part of the Institute’s programme of scholarship and events to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War One. The RAI has been endorsed by the US WWI Centennial Commission as a partner organisation.

The appointee will be expected to engage in research at postdoctoral level and also to teach for up to 4 hours per week each term. The Fellow will also be required to conduct special research on Lord Northcliffe’s involvement with the United States during the war years and especially as leader of the War Mission in 1917, which research should lead to an in-depth study suitable for publication. In making this appointment, the College’s decision will be based primarily on the quality of each candidate’s research and on his/her potential for an academic career.

The salary will be £28,143 per annum. The Fellow will also be entitled to full lunching and dining rights and will receive a research allowance (£2,024), and hospitality allowance (£415).

Applicants will normally be expected to have submitted for a higher research degree before taking up a Junior Research Fellowship.

Those interested in applying should download the further particulars. Applications should be submitted, by email, to college.office@ccc.ox.ac.uk and should include a completed cover sheet, a letter of application, a c.v., list of publications, and a 1,000-word description of present and future research interests. Applications should be received by noon on 5 July. Referees should be asked to write directly, by email, to: college.office@ccc.ox.ac.uk; their references to be received by not later than 5 July.

The College is an equal opportunities employer.

CfP: Between Realpolitik and Utopia: A Century with the Balfour-Declaration

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We call for potential contributors to the conference “Between Realpolitik and Utopia: A Century with the Balfour-Declaration”, to take place at Basel University, 1-3 November 2017.

Coordinators and conveners of the conference are Alfred Bodenheimer and Erik Petry (Center for Jewish Studies) and Maurus Reinkowski (Seminar of Middle Eastern Studies), University of Basel, in cooperation with Hans-Lukas Kieser from The Centre for the History of Violence, University of Newcastle, Australia.

The Balfour Declaration is a major stepping stone in the construction of new order of the Middle East after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, but it is also a notion of what Palestine, Europe and the Middle East might and or should – not – have been. The conference will address the various utopian and dystopian aspects and interpretations of the declaration. The Balfour Declaration has multiplied the projective dimensions of Palestine in the European imagination and has made it part of Europe’s history of identity by embedding the Zionist vision into Western imperial ‘Realpolitik’. A main rationale of the conference is to argue that the Balfour Declaration is emblematic for how convoluted the two entities are that we still conceive today as ‘Europe’ and the ‘Middle East’.

For an extended abstract of the conference’s rationale please see here: balfour-conference_2017_11_1-3_basel

It is the intention of this conference to bring together researchers from various disciplines and fields who, based on free and substantial research (including archival historical research) can contribute to an innovative and responsible thinking on the complex issue of the Balfour Declaration.

Scholars interested to participate are requested to send by 30 June 2016 an exposé (1000 words) and a CV (1 page) to Maurus Reinkowski (maurus.reinkowski@unibas.ch) and Erik Petry (erik.petry@unibas.ch).

Universitaet Basel
Middle Eastern Studies
Maiengasse 51
4056 Basel
Switzerland
Tel. +41 (0)61 267 28 60
Fax +41 (0)61 267 28 64

Conference: Peripheral Visions: European Soldiers and Cultural Encounters in the Long Nineteenth Century

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Trinity College Dublin
2 – 4 June 2016

From the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, European powers mounted military expeditions to the eastern periphery of the continent and to the edge of what they considered to be the ‘civilized’ world. From the Napoleonic expeditions to Italy, Egypt and Russia to the British conquest of Egypt in the 1880s, and from the German Empire’s involvement with the Ottoman Empire to the British and French campaigns in Macedonia and Palestine during the First World War, European soldiers ventured into exotic lands. In so doing, they experienced the unknown while also confronting their own cultural pre-conceptions about the territories they visited and the people against or amongst whom they fought. Often the places they invested were redolent with European cultural significance (Rome, Egypt, Jerusalem), a significance belied by the modern realities of those same sites. In making war, they mapped a Europe of their own imagining. Yet because they engaged in the overt violence of war and the more covert violence of occupation, their encounters were not those of tourists, traders or travel writers, though they certainly contained elements of all three. There was a military specificity to what they saw, to whom they encountered and to how they did so. The encounters were important for the soldiers themselves, for their home countries and for the societies to which they went. Indeed, in terms of numbers and influence, these militarized encounters were one of the most important ways in which Europeans engaged with the eastern and southern periphery of their continent in the course of the long 19th century.

The conference is open to interested scholars. We request intending participants to register (with no charge) in advance. In order to do so, and for all further information, please contact: Dr Fergus Robson (frobson@tcd.ie) or Dr Mahon Murphy (murphm73@tcd.ie)

Further information and conference programme: Peripheral Visions Conference Programme

CfP: Remembering Muted Voices: Conscience, Dissent, Resistance, and Civil Liberties in World War I through Today

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Conference Dates: October 19-21, 2017
National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, Kansas City, MO, USA

During the Great War, many people questioned the claims of the Allied and Central powers, desired a negotiated peace, opposed intervention, refused to support the war effort, and/or even imagined future world orders that could eliminate war. Among them were members of the peace churches and other religious groups, women, pacifists, radicals, labor activists, and other dissenters. Intolerance and repression often muted the voices of these war critics. Almost overnight, the individuals and groups who opposed the war faced constraints on their freedom to advocate, organize, and protest from the government, the press, and war supporters. Peace advocates, antiwar activists, and conscientious objectors also confronted internal disagreements over how to respond to the war and advance the cause of peace. Yet, those who opposed World War I helped initiate modern peace movements and left a legacy that continues to influence antiwar activism.

This interdisciplinary conference, hosted by the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, will explore the experiences of those who were in any way critical of the Great War, sometimes at great cost. We welcome paper, panel, poster, roundtable, and workshop proposals that engage in diverse ways with issues of conscience, dissent, resistance, and civil liberties during World War I in the United States and around the world. We encourage proposals that examine historical and contemporary parallels to the war. Strong conference papers will be given consideration for publication in special issues of the journals Mennonite Quarterly Review and Peace & Change.

Topics might include:

War Resistance as an Expression of Religious Conscience
Secular Dissent and Resistance to War (feminists, socialists, and other movements and communities)
The Costs of War: economic, political, social, physical, psychological, etc.
Civil Liberties in World War I and War Today
Race and Empire in World War I
The Legacy and Relevance of World War I Peace Activism to the Present
The Causes and Prevention of War: World War I and Since
Teaching World War I and Peace History in High School and College
Memory, Memorialization, and the Public History of World War I

The program committee invites interested participants to send a 1-page proposal focused on the theme of the conference by January 31, 2017 to John D. Roth (johndr@goshen.edu).