“War’s destruction brings into being a gallery of particular male and female identities that we tend to compact into two – soldiers on the battle front, women on the home front,” writes Jean Bethke Elshtain, noting that “this reduction is a rhetorical amputation that excises many alternatives, male and female.” Canonical war literature has often presented women’s roles during wartime to be ancillary, highly gendered, and passive, with common representations including soldier’s mothers, women waiting, women mourning, women as nurses/caretakers, women as peacekeepers, brave girls doing “men’s work” on the home front, and promiscuous women. Ranging from limited to problematic, such representations fail to examine the full breadth of women’s participation in and experiences of war including the violence they take part in, their political agency, and the profound trauma they experience as civilian targets of war violence.

Papers addressing books written in any language and about all international conflicts are welcome, however papers must be presented in English. 300 word abstract and CV should be submitted via the NeMLA website by September 30, 2015.

Further information here.