Hofstra Cultural Center, New York, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday November 7, 8, 9, 2018

To mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War, this interdisciplinary conference proposes to explore the impact of total war on the arts from a transnational perspective, including attention to the Ottoman Empire and colonial territories. We are defining arts broadly – literature, performing arts, visual arts and media, including film, propaganda and other mass mediated forms.

World War I was the matrix on which all subsequent violence of the 20th century was forged. The war took millions of lives, led to the fall of four empires, established new nations, and negatively affected others. During and after the war, individuals and communities struggled to find expression for their wartime encounters and communal as well as individual mourning. Throughout this time of enormous upheaval, many artists redefined their place in society, among them writers, performers, painters and composers. Some sought to renew or re-establish their place in the postwar climate, while others longed for an irretrievable past, and still others tried to break with the past entirely. This conference explores the ways that artists contributed to wartime culture – both representing and shaping it – as well as the ways in which wartime culture influenced artistic expressions. Artists’ places within and against reconstruction efforts illuminate the struggles of the day. We seek to examine how they dealt with the experience of conflict and mourning and their role in re-establishing creative traditions in the changing climate of the interwar years.

Keynote address: The Great War and the Avant-Gardes
Annette Becker, Professor of Contemporary History, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense

We invite proposals from a broad range of scholars in all disciplines on the following and related themes:
Individual artists
Art movements
Artistic expressions of wartime atrocities
Literature and art concerning the memory of the Great War
The artistic design and construction of war memorials
Gender and artistic/media expression
Mass media and the war
State intervention/censorship and artistic expression
Artistic strategies for sustaining creative activity during the war
Support of artists and artistic expression during the war
Artists’ national and international networks, their dissolution, reconstitution, or continuation before and after the war
Changes in performance practices during and/or after the war
The dynamic relationship between artistic expression and mourning in the postwar climate
The emergence of new gender norms and their impact on creative choices after the war
New directions for artists after the war
Artistic expressions in the colonial territories during and after the war
Artistic expression, racialization, and race politics

The deadline for submission of proposals is January 15, 2018.

Applicants should email a 250-word proposal and a one-page curriculum vitae to the conference director, Sally Debra Charnow, at sally.charnow@hofstra.edu. Include the applicant’s name and email address.

Conference Director:
Sally Debra Charnow, PhD
Department of History
Hofstra University
Hempstead, New York 11549

For more information, please contact the Hofstra Cultural Center at 516-463-5669 or hofculctr@hofstra.edu