Category Archives: First World War

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.

Cultures and Commemorations of War. Workshop 2: Lest We Forget? Reconsidering FWW Memory. 11 Dec. IWM

Posted on by

Cultures and Commemorations of War: An Interdisciplinary Seminar Series
Workshop Two: Lest We Forget? Reconsidering First World War Memory

Monday 11 December, Orpen Room, Imperial War Museum
Funded by a British Academy Rising Stars Engagement Award

This interdisciplinary seminar series ‘Cultures and Commemorations of War’ brings together early career researchers and advanced scholars working on the memory of war in a range of disciplines with practitioners, policy makers, charities, and representatives from the media and culture and heritage industries. Through a series of three one-day workshops held in Oxford and London in 2017-18, this series aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue about the history and nature of war commemoration across time and its cultural, social, psychological and political iterations.

This second workshop will consider the ways that we remember the First World War, focusing on recent commemorative projects as case studies of war commemoration and memory making. The keynotes in the afternoon are Paul Cummins, the artist behind the poppies at the Tower of London, and Jeremy Deller, who devised We’re Here Because We’re Here (https://becausewearehere.co.uk/). Here’s a 2014 video about making the poppies and a 2017 video about the poppies at Plymouth Hoe on the Poppies Tour (#poppiestour).

The schedule and poster are below. Registration is £15 (standard) and £10 (concession) and includes lunch, coffee and a reception.
Please register here: http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/conferences-events/english-faculty/english-faculty-events/cultures-and-commemorations-of-war-workshop-two-lest-we-forget

For more information, contact Alice Kelly (alice.kelly@rai.ox.ac.uk)

9.00-9.30: Registration

9.30-9.45: Opening Remarks – Alice Kelly

9.45-11: Roundtable: What have we learnt from the FWW Centenary?
Emma Hanna, Pierre Purseigle, Anna Maguire, Jane Potter

11-11.30: Coffee

11.30-12.45: Panel: Case Studies in Public Memory and Education
Glyn Prysor, Catriona Pennell, Paul Cornish

12.45-13.45: Lunch

13.45-14.45: Keynote 1 – Jeremy Deller, in conversation with John Horne

14.45-15.15: Coffee

15.15-16.15: Keynote 2 – Paul Cummins, in conversation with Alice Kelly

16.15-17.15: Panel: Conclusions – The Next 100 Years
Lucy Noakes, Ross Wilson, John Horne

5.15-6pm: Wine Reception