Category Archives: Journals

CFP: Vulcan Early-Career Prize: social history of military technology

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The Vulcan Early-Career Prize for the best article in the field of social history of military technology

Vulcan: The International Journal of the Social History of Military Technology invites submissions for its inaugural Early-Career Prize. The winning article as judged by the editorial board will be published in the 2018 volume (6) of Vulcan, and will officially be announced as the prize winner in the journal volume as well as on the journal webpage. The winner will receive a cash prize of €500. The prize is open to graduate students who are currently registered at a higher education institute, or to those who have obtained their doctoral degree after January 1, 2012.

Vulcan is a peer-reviewed journal, appearing in one issue per year, that addresses military technology as both agent and object of social change. Vulcan publishes original research articles, book reviews, and short notes and communications that go beyond traditional hardware stories of military technology. Academic and popular histories of weapons, warships and other physical manifestations of warfare have tended to assume a strictly utilitarian or rational basis for invention, innovation and use. Such approaches may ignore some very important questions: What are the social values, attitudes, and military (and non-military) interests that shape and support or oppose these technologies? What are the consequences of gender, race, class, and other aspects of the social order for the nature and use of military technology? Or, more generally, how do social and cultural environments within the military itself or in the larger society affect military technological change? And the indispensable corollary: how does changing military technology affect other aspects of society and culture?

Vulcan casts a wide net, taking a very broad view of technology and its wider ramifications that encompasses not only the production, distribution, use, and replacement of weapons and weapon systems, but also communications, logistic, scientific, medical, and other technologies of military relevance. Papers may range widely in space and time, and we welcome especially submissions on non-Western and premodern topics. Themes might include the ways in which social factors (including politics and economics), and other extra-military factors have influenced and been influenced by the invention, R&D, diffusion, or use of military technologies; the roles that military technologies play in shaping and reshaping the relationships between institutions; historiographical or museological topics that discuss how military technology has been analyzed, interpreted, and understood in other fields, other cultures, and other times.
Submission Requirements

Articles should be based extensively on primary research, must not have been previously published in another form or outlet, and should not be currently under consideration by another journal or book series. Essays (between 8,000 and 12,000 words) should be written in American English, and conform to The Chicago Manual of Style (15th Edition). Papers should include an abstract of approximately 150 words and 5–8 keywords. Detailed submission instructions can be found at brill.com/vulc. Submissions for the prize should be submitted online through the Vulcan Editorial Manager by 31 December 2017. In order to allow for sufficient time for the peer review process, early submissions are welcomed.

For further information, please contact the Editor-in-Chief, Steven A. Walton at sawalton@mtu.edu.

CfP: Writing 1914-1918. National Responses to the Great War

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Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature
Special Issue: “Writing 1914-1918. National Responses to the Great War”
Summer 2017

Edited by Toby Garfitt (University of Oxford)
& Nicolas Bianchi (Université Montpellier-III / Universiteit Gent)

With the outbreak of the First World War and the uncovering of modern, dehumanized violence, many direct witnesses faced a double crisis when they tried to share their personal experience. The discovery of physical violence led above all to a crisis of representation, due to the inability of the traditional depictions of war to convey the nature of modern warfare. But there was also a crisis of language, caused by the perverted use of the standardized language to justify the war through political and journalistic lies and heroic descriptions of the events. Despite all this, much material was produced, representing most of the countries that were involved, directly or not, in the war. Letters, diaries, novels, poems, war reportages were written and published in abundance, from the beginning of the war until the end of the 1930s, and some of them achieved immediate and considerable success.

While a substantial number of studies focus fairly narrowly on these works in order to explore how and why they managed to cope with both crises, there have been comparatively few attempts to take a more global approach. Some literary productions from that time are well known, but this is often due to the particular experience of an author rather than to the broader national climate of the country concerned. One of the main goals of this STTCL special issue will be to offer a global perspective in order to locate a number of works from the period within the specific framework of their national production. Because of the way the mother tongue of the authors naturally influenced their way of thinking and because of the rise of nationalisms at the beginning of the century, each author was faced with either embracing or rejecting a national climate. Our work will use this reflection on national responses to the Great War to shed light on some forgotten texts of the period which bring an original response to the challenges of the war, in relation to the canon. Widening the approach to include all the relevant languages will allow a comparison between some of the essential themes present in the texts.

Articles must be written in English and should not exceed 7,500 words in length. We will particularly appreciate articles including examples of French, German and Spanish texts, which are the main interest of the review. Authors must provide a 500-word abstract along with a brief CV, complete contact details, and academic affiliation. The deadline for the submission of your proposal is set on May 15, 2016.

Further information: Dernière version appel STTCL (mars)

AHS Classics Virtual Issue: Australia and the First World War

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This Special AHS Classics Virtual Issue highlights the important contribution that Australian Historical Studies has made to our understanding of Australia and the First World War. Drawing on over forty years of scholarship and debate, the volume showcases key articles by some of Australia’s most significant historians of the war and the Anzac tradition that emerged from it. These articles show that the adaptability of the Anzac legend requires investigation and caution in the production of new histories of events a century distant.

The articles in this virtual special issue are currently free to view until the end of December 2015. For further information and to access the articles, click here.

Current History: Legacies of 1914

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Current History, the 100-year-old publication devoted to independent analysis of contemporary international affairs, presents its November 2014 issue, a special issue titled “Legacies of 1914.” For more information—or to subscribe and gain instant online access to the current issue and our full archives of articles—please visit our website: currenthistory.com.

Current History is available for devices with a Kindle app. Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/curhist. And Twitter: @CurrentHistory1.

Our November issue includes the following essays:

The Global Legacies of World War I
by John Horne (Trinity College Dublin)
The Great War brought new forms of industrialized violence, civilian suffering, radical politics, and world order. Understanding its legacies requires a global perspective.

Rediscovering Internationalism
by Glenda Sluga (University of Sydney)
Visions of international cooperation culminated after World War I in the League of Nations. Yet internationalism in practice has always been constrained by the competing force of nationalism.

The Many Meanings of National Self-Determination
by Brad Simpson (University of Connecticut)
In 1919, Woodrow Wilson embraced the principle of nationality—but only for Europeans. Debate has continued ever since over who is entitled to nationhood, and what rights it should entail.

Genocidal Legacies of the Great War
by Mark Levene (University of Southampton)
World War I catalyzed a century of genocides. The manipulation of ethnic groups by great powers during the war weakened minority rights and led to several massacres seldom remembered today.

The Economic Consequences of the War and the Peace
by Patricia Clavin (University of Oxford)
Total war produced a new political economy: As states demanded more from their citizens, the people also expected their governments to provide more economic security.

Perspective: Contingency and Catastrophe
by Sean McMeekin (Bard College)
Drawing analogies between the global political situation in 1914 and the present misses the point: From its outbreak to its conclusion, the Great War was defined by uncertainty and accident.

Books: Dawn of the Almighty Dollar
by Emily S. Rosenberg (University of California, Irvine)
A new book by Adam Tooze boldly seeks to revise the history of World War I and the interwar era. His focus on the rise of American financial power is apt, but overlooks the role of US politics.

Current History publishes nine times per year. Each month’s issue focuses on a single region or topic—including annual issues on China and East Asia, Russia and Eurasia, the Middle East, Latin America, South Asia, Europe, and Africa. At our website, currenthistory.com, you can see the current monthly issue, search Current History’s archives, or download a free sample article from the current issue.