Category Archives: CFP

CfP: New Voices in the History of War, Oxford, 18 July 2018

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Organisers: Anita Klingler, Dr Ismini Pells, Jan Tattenberg, Louis Morris

It is now more than a half-century since ‘new military history’ began to challenge the traditional orthodoxy among historians of war, and successive waves of social and cultural history during the intervening decades have made an indelible impact on the changing face of the subdiscipline. Despite several methodological revolutions, however, many aspects of the field remain little changed. These include the dominant focus on Western theatres of conflict and the twentieth century, the preponderance of male historians on panels and faculty rosters, and the marginal position of history of war within the academy.

This one-day conference aims to bring together diverse representatives of a new generation of researchers, and use their cutting-edge work as a starting point for discussions regarding the future of the history of war as a broad interdisciplinary enterprise. We invite doctoral students and early career researchers, including those working in other fields who have an interdisciplinary connection to the study of war, to submit papers on any aspect of warfare across all periods and places.

Potential themes include, but are not limited to:
• Past and future developments in the historiography of war
• Transnational networks as military actors
• Cultural and artistic depictions of warfare
• War and peace as evolving concepts in political thought
• Comparative global approaches to conflict
• Soldiers as case studies within the history of gender and race
• New approaches to operational military history

The day will conclude with a plenary discussion of the best way to advance the field and to increase the diversity of its approaches and participants.

The conference will be held at All Souls College, Oxford, on Wednesday 18th July 2018, with the generous financial support of the Pembroke College Annual Fund and the Oxford Centre for European History.

Abstracts (maximum 300 words) for papers of 20 minutes should be submitted to the organisers at newvoicesconference2018@gmail.com along with a CV or brief biographical text by 18th June 2018.

We aim to offer travel subsidies for speakers, and full details will be announced with the start of registration on 21st June 2018.

CfP: Imperial Implosions: World War I and its Global Implications

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California State University at Channel Islands, Camarillo, California, and the History Department are pleased to announce that it will host a conference commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I on November 8th and 9th, 2018. The focus of the conference is Imperial Implosions: The Global Implications of World War I. We are looking for papers dealing with any aspect of the World War I in Asia, Africa, America, Europe, Latin America or elsewhere where there were significant historical implications and reverberations.

Featured speakers at the conference will be Professor Sean McMeekin of Bard College and the author of The Russian Revolution (2017) and The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution and the Making of the Modern Middle East (2015) and Professor Pria Satia, of Stanford University and the author of Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (2018) and The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain’s Covert Empire in the Middle East (2008)

Prospective presenters and participants should send a 350 word maximum proposal to either P. Scott Corbett, scott.corbett@csuci.edu or Michael Powelson michael.powelson@csuci.edu by September 3, 2018 with the final version of papers due September 14, 2018.

There is no registration fee for faculty or student presenters and no fee for student attendees.

Details about registration, travel, and accommodations can be obtained from P. Scott Corbett, scott.corbett@csuci.edu, (805) 437-8970 or (805) 267-6131.

CFP – Close encounters, displacement and war

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Close Encounters in War Journal – n. 1
Call for articles
Thematic Issue: “Close encounters, displacement and war”

Close Encounters in War Journal is a peer-reviewed journal aimed at studying war as a human experience, through interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches ranging from the Humanities to the Social Sciences. The second issue (n. 1) of the journal will be a thematic one, dedicated to the experience of displacement as a consequence of war and conflict, and titled “Close encounters, displacement and war”.

Wars in general are cultural phenomena, among the most ancient and deeply rooted aspects of human cultural evolution: investigating their meaning, by reflecting on the ways we experience wars and conflicts as human beings is therefore essential. Conflictis deeply intertwined with language, culture, instincts, passions, behavioural patterns and with the human ability to represent concepts aesthetically. The concept of “encounter” is therefore fundamental as it involves experience, and as a consequence it implies that war can shape and develop our minds and affect our behaviour by questioning habits and values, prejudices and views of the world.

Displacement is one of the most affecting consequences of war. Armed conflicts move people from one place to another, often trigging extensive phenomena of mobility that can influence societies in depth. The United Nations estimate that in the last few years 65 million people have been displaced by war and prosecution, whereas Malcom Proudfood famously calculated that no less than 60 million people were displaced from their homes during the Second World War and in its aftermath. Among them, there were those who had been forcibly deported by the Nazis, the soldiers who had moved with the armed forces and, most notably, a mass of civilians who became refugees.

Today, the refugee crisis represents one of the most urgent problems internationally, and it has a deep impact on political choices especially in Europe. Fleeing from combat zones has always been the only chance of survival for non-combatants, and refugees are among the most vulnerable groups involved in armed conflicts. Nonetheless, displacement can be multifaceted and not always explicit. Long periods of absence from home (e.g. as members of occupation troops or as POWs) may produce significant psychological and social effects on combatants, who would find it difficult to come back to their society, family and cultural environment. Fighting in colonial armies or being involved in civil wars, too, are sometimes perceived as cultural, social and moral displacement. On a broader scale displacement could trigger interesting phenomena of social, anthropological, cultural and transnational mobility capable of affecting national identities and shaping cultures.

Displacement is such a critical problem for modern societies that many institutions, scholarly or otherwise, commit to the study and research of migration from the ethical, legal and humanitarian point of view.

Issue n. 1 of CEIW Journal will aim to investigate displacement by exploring its facets both on a micro-scale, by studying individual testimonies and experiences, and on a broad scale by observing macro-phenomena of displacement throughout history with comparative, critical and cultural methodologies.

We invite articles which analyse the experience of displacement from ancient to modern and contemporary periods, from the perspective of the encounter, reaching beyond the study of military tactics and strategy and focusing on the way human beings ‘encounter’ each other with and within the experience of displacement. Contributions are invited to promote discussion and scholarly research from established scholars, early-career researchers, and from practitioners who have encountered irregular warfare in the course of their activities.

The topics that can be investigated include but are not limited to:
· Social impact of war displacement
· Displacement and transnational history
· Psychological aspects of war displacement
· Violence and trauma
· Cultural encounters and identity
· Displacement and colonial wars, civil wars, international conflicts
· War captivity and other forms of deportation
· Forced displacement, war crimes, ethnic cleansing
· Displacement and transitional justice
· Representations of otherness, race, and gender
· Religion and politics
· Testimonies, personal narratives
· Oral history and memory studies

The editors of Close Encounters in War Journal invite the submission of 300 words abstracts in English by 1st June 2018. Decisions will be made by 30th June 2018 and the completed articles (6000-8000 words including footnotes, bibliography excluded, in English) will be expected by 1st November 2018. All contributions will go under a process of blind peer-review.

Abstracts can be sent to: simona.tobia@closeencountersinwar.com and gianluca.cinelli@closeencountersinwar.com

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.