Category Archives: WW1

Graduate summer school – An Environmental History of the Great War, France & Belgium, 2-7 July 2018

Posted on by

The Centre international de recherche de l’Historial de la Grande Guerre (CIRHGG, Péronne) together with the EHESS (Paris), the University of Heidelberg, the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History de l’Université du Luxembourg, the Université catholique de Louvain, Université Clermont-Auvergne – Centre d’Histoire « Espaces et cultures » and the Université de Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens), invites applications for its third summer school for graduate students (masters and PhD) working on the First World
War.

We intend to bring together an international group of 20 to 30 graduate students working on military, cultural, social, and environmental history of the First World War from 2nd to 7th July 2018. Over the course of the week, they will have opportunity to get to know each other, but also a wide range of internationally recognized academic experts. Guided tours on excursions to French and Belgian sites are an integral part of the program and will enrich the participants’ experience.

After the 2014 and 2016 editions of our summer school, which focused respectively on initiations in contemporary wartime experiences (http://1418.hypotheses.org/547) and on the “Face of Battle” and battlefields (http://1418.hypotheses.org/1059), we have chosen a new topic for 2018: the environmental history of the First World War.

We understand the environmental history of the Great War in a broad sense. We will of course reflect on the environmental consequences of the war: the destruction of cities, villages, soils, various forms of pollution and their counterparts: reconstruction and reconstitution (at the level of public policies but also at the level of territories), de-mining of battlefields, exhumation and re-inhumation of the dead, policies for maintaining their memory and handling war ruins (and in particular battlefields). This obviously implies taking into account the long duration of the Great War, since the environmental footprint of the Great War is often present to this day. Moreover, the environmental consequences of the war are not confined to the front lines. The economic exploitation of the hinterlands, even if they are far away from the epicentres of warfare, has their rightful place in this context, as it results in sometimes profound and long-lasting changes to ecosystems. For example, what does the totalization process mean in terms of exploitation of oil, mineral resources, forestry, agriculture, etc.? Thus the stigmata of the famine of 1915-1916 in Mount Lebanon are visible until today in the landscapes. The history of cities will also be an important focus, since the war also had a great influence on urban development, as it did in Thessaloniki, for example, due to the massive presence of Allied troops, but also to a great fire in 1917.

However, this conception of environmental history based on the consequences of war does not in itself sum up the relationship between individuals and their environment. The environmental conditions and constraints that the environment imposes on warfare are at the heart of many current research projects that examine the relationship of individuals and groups to the space around them and their larger environment. This means that varied scales of analysis must be used. The relationship between combatants and their combat environment, for example, can then be evoked on the basis of both meteorological and geographical criteria. Newspapers and correspondences are full of references to geographical features, to places lived in, to the weather. The drawings and photographs represent “war landscapes” in large numbers.

This will make it possible to address in return not only the effects of war on various environments, but also the effects of the environment on warfare and those that take part in it on the different theatres of operations (mountains, seas, hot and cold deserts…). This may then also allow us to investigate a new global history of the world war in terms of latitudes, longitudes, altitudes, in short to consider the possibility of a geohistory of the Great War that is as concerned with the environmental conditions as with the environmental consequences.

Download information
English: CFP-env2018-EN- OK
French: CFP-env2018-FR OK

Programme
Participants will benefit from guided tours of the battlefields and memorial sites in France and Belgium (Somme, Ypres…), with specialists, practitioners and experts in battlefield archaeology (Dominik Dendooven In Flanders Fields Museum). Lectures and discussions with leading First World War historians (including members of the CIRHGG Steering Committee) and environmental history experts will complement workshop sessions led by members of the organizing committee (Laurence Van Ypersele, Franziska, Heimburger, Benoît Majerus, Nicolas Beaupré). Successful students will also have the opportunity to present their own work from the perspective chosen by the summer school.

Advanced masters students and doctoral students can apply to the summer school. Research themes directly related to the school’s theme or showing how their research is linked to it will be prioritised, but all masters or doctoral students working on the Great War and its consequences can apply.

The working languages of the Summer School will be English and French. In order to participate fully in the programme and in particular the guided tours, at least a passive knowledge of French is required.

In order to enable us to exchange efficiently, we will send participants a preparatory dossier to be read ahead of the summer school with archival excerpts and scientific articles.

We will cover accommodation (single or double room; shared bathrooms), transportation (from and to Paris), entrance fees for the different sites and most meals. We also hope to be able to contribute to the transport costs of participants to and from Paris, especially for those whose home institutions do not subsidize this type of expenditure. We strongly encourage applicants to try to secure partial or full funding of these transport costs from their home university.

The application (in English or French) includes a one-page summary of the research project and a one-page academic CV.
Applications must be submitted by midnight on Thursday, 15th February 2018 via our dedicated platform https://environment1418.sciencesconf.org/?lang=en.

Procedure:
1- Create an account on the website, clicking on « Create account » in the left-hand menu.
2- Fill in the form, click on « register » and then activate the account when you receive the confirmation email. 3- Click on « Submissions » in the left-hand column and then « Submit a paper ».
4- Fill in the submission metadata. In the “Abstract” field, please tell us in a couple of paragraphs why you feel this summer school would be beneficial to you and what you could bring to it. When you reach the page for paper submission, please submit your project summary as “Paper” and your CV as “supplementary information”.
We will notify applicants whether their papers have been accepted by 15th March 2018.
Laurence Van Ypersele (Université catholique de Louvain)
Nicolas Beaupré (Université Clermont-Auvergne – Centre d’Histoire « Espaces et cultures »)
Caroline Fontaine (Centre International de Recherche de l’Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne)
Franziska Heimburger (Sorbonne-Université – EA Histoire et Dynamique des Espaces Anglophones)
Benoît Majerus (Université du Luxembourg – Centre for Contemporary and Digital History)
Claire Morelon (Università degli Studi di Padova – DiSSGeA)
Contact : ecole-ete@cirhgg.org

1st Joint KCL/Oxford History of War Conference

Posted on by

The study of the history of war at King’s College London and the University of Oxford has long been intertwined, owing to the figure of Sir Michael Howard. At King’s, the sustained growth and success of the Department of War Studies, and the new Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War attest to this. At Oxford, Howard’s legacy is reflected in a sustained engagement with the history of war beyond operational military history, taking seriously wider cultural, economic, intellectual, political, and social entanglements of armed conflict.

This conference aims to bring together postgraduate research students working at King’s College London and the University of Oxford in order to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas or work in progress, and foster new connections and exchanges between the two institutions. The conference aims to create an inclusive forum to showcase current research on war and armed conflict in all its breadth and will therefore accept submissions from historians in any and all fields, working on a range of periods.

We invite historians working on a variety of aspects of war, whether they are interested in operational military history or the representation of war in art or poetry, to present their research. Submissions are welcomed from scholars working on any disciplinary approach to armed conflict in any period.

The conference will take place at King’s College London on 23 April 2018.

Proposals
Proposals (c. 300 words) for papers of 20 minutes should be submitted to the organisers at kcloxphdconference@gmail.com by 1 March 2018.

CfP: The effects of World War 1 on the Christian Churches in Europe 1918-1925

Posted on by

Rome 12-14 November 2018

This workshop will adopt an international comparative approach to study the effects of the Great War on institutionalized Christian religion (eg. Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches) in the immediate aftermath of the war. How did churches perceive the war and the immediate post-war period? What was the impact on Christian theology and culture? How did churches interact with the belligerent nation states and how did they cope with the changing (geo)political situation after the war? What were their ecclesiologi­cal, pastoral and liturgical challenges after the armistices? Did they adopt a defensive stance towards secularization, or did they intensify their dialogue with modernity? To what extent did they move towards a pastoral policy of social healing and offer a welcome to Christian pacifism and ecumenism?

The workshop wishes to stimulate innovative research on the interaction between religion and society in the difficult years between the end of the war and the mid-1920s. It explicitly adopts an interdenominational and international comparative perspective, stimulating a multifaceted and in-depth analysis, with due attention to methodological questions. It wants to combine the results of different fields of historical research: the history of churches and religions, cultural, intellectual, social and political history, etc. Although well-chosen case-studies with a focus on, for instance, particular regional/national contexts, or specific denominations, organizations or individuals can surely offer valuable insights, the organizers especially aim for papers that deal with the issues concerned from a broad comparative perspective. They should contribute to a better understanding of the changing nature of religious cultures across Europe. Although the workshop will deal in particular with the immediate post-war years (1918-mid 1920s), contributors are encouraged to adopt a broader chronological perspective of continuity and discontinuity in evaluating the results of their analysis for the period at hand.

The workshop will bring together senior academics as well as junior doctoral researchers in a scientific dialogue on the subject. Introductory keynote lectures from established researchers and thematic sessions will structure the multi-layered perspective as well as the comparative baseline.

More information here.

Practical
The main conference and discussion language will be English, but papers in other languages are accepted as well. In that case, the organizers do ask for an English summary and an English or bilingual PowerPoint or other presentation.

Proposals should be submitted as PDF documents and should contain the following: a clear title of the proposed paper; a summary (max. 500 words), outlining the paper’s goals, methodology and source materials; CV(s) of author(s), with contact information, position and institutional affiliation.

These abstracts should be attached and emailed to the work-shop secretary (kristien.suenens@kadoc.kuleuven.be) no later than 1 February 2018. You should receive a confirmation of proposal receipt within 48 hours. The proposals will be evaluated and selected by the Scientific Committee based on topic relevance, innovativeness and the degree to which the proposal answers the call. Notification of the evaluation will occur no later than 1 April 2018. Full papers should be sent to the workshop organizers no later than 1 October 2018.

CFP: Demographic impacts of World War I

Posted on by

While we know that World War I killed millions, analysis of its demographic effects on the surviving population has been relatively limited since studies by Louis Henry on France and Jay Winter on Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. The centenary of the Armistice will occur during this year’s meeting of the Social Science History Association making it an especially appropriate time to consider the demographic impacts of the Great War.

We seek papers examining the impact of World War I on population and demographic behavior in all facets, from any country. Papers re-examining European demographic impacts with new data or methods are welcome, as are papers on other countries where the demographic effects of the war have not been fully considered.

In the tradition of the Social Science History Association, we welcome papers from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and institutions. In the event that more than four strong papers are received, we will attempt to form a second session or distribute 1 or 2 papers into appropriate other sessions of the conference.

Proposals are due to the conference by February 16. I would appreciate hearing from potential participants by February 9 at the very latest in order to organize this session. All that is required for submission is a title and 250 word abstract.

This year’s meeting of the Social Science History Association will be held in Phoenix from 8-11 November. Further information on the conference is available at http://ssha.org.

Please write with any inquiries and paper proposals to Evan Roberts, University of Minnesota, eroberts@umn.edu.

Conference: Central and Eastern Europe after the First World War

Posted on by

Date: 31 January – 2 February 2018
Venue: Embassy of Slovak Republic (Hildebrandstraße 25, 10785 Berlin)

Conference program

Wednesday, 31 January 2018
13.30 – 14:30
Welcome address by the Ambassador of Slovak Republic, S.E. Peter Lizák
Introduction – Jan Rydel and Matthias Weber
Key Note – Jay Winter: The Second Great War, 1917–1923

14:30 – 15:00 Coffee break

15:00 – 17:00
I. The End of Empires and the Emergence of a New State Order
Chair: Martin Pekár

László Szarka: Die Alternative des Verhandlungsfriedens in Donauraum. Ungarn und die Nachbarvölker zwischen Asternrevolution und kommunistischer Machtergreifung 1918–1919

Tobias Weger: “Mitteleuropa”, “Międzymorze” and the “Little Entente”. Conflicting transnational spatial concepts in East-Central and Southeast Europe

Jochen Böhler: The Central European civil war, 1918–1921

Gennadi Korolov: “The United States between the Baltic and Black Seas” of Anton Łuckiewicz and the project of Ukrainian federation Otto Eichelman. A comparative study of federalism

Commentator: Dušan Kováč

17:00 – 17:30 Coffee break

17:30 – 19:30
II. New Beginnings and Political Emancipation (Part 1)
Chair: Robert Zurek

Burkhard Olschowsky: “Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen“ aus der Perspektive W. I. Lenins und W. Wilsons

Michael Eric Lambert: The end of the German Empire and the emergence of the Volksdeutsche terminology

Wolfgang Templin: Versailler Scharaden. Polen und die Ukraine auf den Pariser Friedenskonferenzen

Marcela Sǎlǎgean: New beginnings and political emancipation in Romania after the First World War

Commentator: Wolfgang Hardtwig

Thursday, 1 February 2018
9:00 – 11:00
III. New Beginnings and Political Emancipation (Part 2)
Chair: Rafał Rogulski

Attila Simon: Proletarischer Internationalismus oder Nationalismus. Alternativen der Sozialdemokratie in der Slowakei nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg

Andreea Dăncilă: The Dynamics of post-war political structures in multi-ethnic regions. Transylvania at the end of 1918

Beka Kobakhidze: Paris 1919–1920: Georgia`s independence in the political West

Karolina Łabowicz-Dymanus: Granting political rights to women in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland: towards gender equality or a pragmatism of national revival?

Commentator: Jan Rydel

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee break

11:30 – 13:00
IV. Social, Economic and Cultural Circumstances
Chair: Malkhaz Toria

Maciej Górny: Post-WWI East-Central Europe and the challenges of economic reconstruction, 1918–1923

Piotr Juszkiewicz: Modernism and war. The notion of regeneration in European art and architecture after WWI

Peter Haslinger: Konkurrenz im Gelände: Staatliche Interessen und lokale Lebenswelten im Kontext der ungarisch-tschechoslowakischen Grenzziehungskommission 1921–1925

Commentator: Stefan Troebst

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 16:00
V. Revolutions, Counter-revolutions, Revisionism and Territorial Claims
Chair: Matthias Weber

Arnold Suppan: Cuius regio eius natio. Arguments to legitimize territorial claims against other nations` lands

Andrei Zamoiski: “Peasants wait for them with hope”: The civil war in Belarusian province 1919–1922

Ibolya Murber: Die Habsburgermonarchie, Österreich und Ungarn in der Sogwirkung der russischen Oktoberrevolution” zwischen 1917 und 1919

Rastko Lompar: The “Red Scare” in Yugoslavia: the Hungarian “Soviet republic” and the beginning of Yugoslav anti-communism 1919–1921

Commentator: Ingo Loose

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break

16:30 – 18:00
VI. Social and psychological Consequences of the War
Chair: Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefańczyk

Marek Syrný: Finis Hungariae – Vivat Czechoslovakia. Slovak politics and society at the edge of the 1918–1919

Rudolf Kučera: Murder and the post-war reconstruction. Czechoslovakia and Austria compared

Joanna Urbanek: From the shell shock to the Rentenneurose. Early research on war trauma in Poland, Austro-Hungary and Germany (1917–1923)

Commentator: Hannes Grandits

Friday, 2 February 2018
9:30 – 11:00
VII. Memories of the Great War
Chair: Burkhard Olschowsky

Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefańczyk: Creation of new politics of memory as a consequence of the rebirth of a state. Case study: Poland in the first years after the First World War

Vasilius Safronovas: Non-overshadowed expressions of the First World War experiences in Lithuania (1914–1923)

Florin Abraham: Did the Great War end? Memory and memorialization of the First World War in Romania

Commentator: Attila Pók

11:00 – 11:15 Coffee break

11:15-12:00
Final lecture – Mariusz Wołos: Versailles – Stabilisierung oder Destabilisierung in Mittel- und Osteuropa?

12.30 End of the conference

Conference Organizer:
European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, Warsaw; Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe, Oldenburg

Partner:
University of Leipzig – Centre for Area Studies; Jagiellonian University of Cracow, Department of Historical Anthropology; Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, Department of History; Hungarian Academy of Science, Institute for Humanities, Research Center of History; Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Slovak Institute in Berlin

In cooperation with:
Embassy of Slovak Republic

Financed by:
The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (Germany); Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland as part of the Multi-annual Program „Niepodległa“ 2017–2021

Conference languages: German and English (with translation)

Registration deadline: 25 January 2018
Register here

CfP: The First World War at sea: conflict, culture and commemoration

Posted on by

National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 8-10 November 2018

Call for papers deadline: 1 March 2018
Conference website

This conference will explore the First World War at sea through wide-ranging themes designed to provide a forum for interdisciplinary research and new perspectives on the subject. Focused on both navies and the merchant marine, the conference will also place the experience of the maritime war within the historical context of the years preceding and following the conflict.

Social history:
The human experience of maritime conflict
Explorations of the war at sea from perspectives of class, rank, race, age, gender or sexuality
Explorations of the war at sea from imperial and global perspectives

Operational history:
The ‘undramatic’ duties of naval warfare: blockade, minelaying, reconnaissance, trade protection, power projection
Naval wartime roles around the globe
The wartime duties of the merchant marine
Technology and the war at sea

Institutional history:
The wartime training of naval officers and ratings
The impact of war on naval hierarchies and ideas of leadership
Institutional lessons learned, and navies in the Second World War
The impact of the war on the merchant marine

Cultural history:
Public opinion and media coverage relating to the navy/merchant marine before, during and after the conflict
Cultural constructions of maritime heroism, and their relationship to pre-war touchstones, from Nelson to Scott

Memory and commemoration:
Remembering the war at sea: memorials, memoirs and material culture
Family history and the legacy of maritime war
Restoring the naval heroic: cinema, novels, pageants and museums
Themes, events and people that commemoration left unremembered

Please submit proposals of 300 words for individual papers, along with a short CV to Lizelle de Jager (Research Department Executive, National Maritime Museum): research@rmg.co.uk

We welcome submissions from academics, local historians and community group projects.

This conference is held in partnership with Gateways to the First World War, an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded centre for public engagement with the First World War Centenary.

CfP: The Multiplicity of Exits from the War: the Experience of the Eastern Front Cities

Posted on by

National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (Kyiv, Ukraine); Center for Urban History (Lviv, Ukraine)
August 28-30, 2018: 3 days (2 conference days and 1 study tour day)

Organizers:
Center for Urban History (Lviv, Ukraine);
History department, National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (Kyiv, Ukraine);
University of Victoria (Victoria, Canada)

Deadlines:
*Extended deadline: April 1, 2018 for proposals*
July 16, 2018 for pre-circulated papers

Contact:
conferences@lvivcenter.org

The International Conference entitled “The Multiplicity of Exits from the War: the Experience of the Eastern Front Cities” is the second of the events dedicated to studying the urban experience of the Great War in the areas where the Eastern Front ran from the Baltic to the Caucasus. The first event, an international seminar “The City Experience of the Great War in Eastern Europe”, took place on June 23-25, 2016 at the Center for Urban History of the Central Eastern Europe in Lviv.

The purpose of our conference is to focus on the period of the end of the Great War, which on the Eastern Front was accompanied by revolutions, formation of national states, civilian wars, and armed conflicts for disputed territories. Chronologically, it covers the years 1917-1923: from the February Revolution in the Russian Empire to the final determination of borders in post-war Eastern Europe. Consequently, this era was a period of transformation when new political practices were introduced in conditions of general social and economic instability, violence and impunity, demobilization and new mobilization. At the same time, these years can be considered as an approbation period of practices which will eventually become dominant in the totalitarian states of the USSR and the Third Reich: controlling people through the introduction of cards and the differentiation of society by ethnic/class/political criteria.

Participants:
This will be an international and pre-circulated papers conference with open call and invited keynote speakers. We expect to host 20-25 participants from Ukraine and abroad. We also invite keynote speakers, who will deliver lectures and address the most acute aspects of subjects discussed during the conference. Our aim is to bring together distinguished scholars and researchers from a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to history, anthropology, geography, peace and conflict studies, literature, performing arts, media studies and related disciplines. Advanced PhD students and young researchers from Eastern Europe are especially encouraged to apply and contribute. The working language of the workshop is English.

How to apply:
In order to take part in the conference one has to submit her/his abstract (up to 500 words); short bio (up to 150 words); contact information by April 1, 2018. Successful applicants will be notified by April 15, 2018. They will have to send a short version of presentation (up to 5,000 words) by July 16, 2018. All the papers will be sent to discussants for reviews in advance. Each panel will consist of no more than 4 presenters, moderator and a discussant. Time-limit for a presentation is no longer than 20 minutes.

Program Costs
The organizers will cover accommodation, meals, and excursions within the program. There is limited funding for travel. Therefore we ask you to indicate if you need financial support, and when possible, to inquire about additional conference funding from your home institutions.

Full details of the CfP here.