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

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: The impact of WWI on marriages, divorces and gender relations in Europe

Conference and edited volume focused on the impact of WWI on marriage, divorce and gender relations

As we approach the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI, we would like to invite you to contribute to a project focusing on the impact of The Great War on the life-courses of “ordinary” citizens who lived through this war. The project we propose focuses on the impact of WWI on marriage, divorces and gender relations in Europe. As historians, sociologists and demographers, we seek to join both approaches into an endeavour that balances quantitative and qualitative perspectives.

Call for contributions: impact-wwi_call_for_contributions

We plan to hold a conference on October 5 and 6, 2017 in Leuven, Belgium, and, subsequently, to join those presentations that are of high quality and form a coherent unity into an edited volume, for publication with an international high profile publisher.

We look forward to hearing from you by December 21 2016 whether this project appeals to you, and whether you would like to submit an abstract for the conference and/or the edited volume.

Contact: Dr. Saskia C. Hin, saskia.hin@kuleuven.be

If so, we will be happy to receive your extended abstract (2-3 pages) by February 1 2017. On the basis of the selected abstracts, we plan to approach publishers with the general idea of and the skeleton for the edited volume.

We are happy to let you know as well that we are able to provide one night in a hotel, dinner (Thursday) and lunch (Friday) for all speakers at the conference. Unfortunately, we are not able to cover travel costs.

The conference would start on October 5 (Thursday) in the mid-afternoon and end on October 6 (Friday) before dinner time.

CfP: Between Realpolitik and Utopia: A Century with the Balfour-Declaration

We call for potential contributors to the conference “Between Realpolitik and Utopia: A Century with the Balfour-Declaration”, to take place at Basel University, 1-3 November 2017.

Coordinators and conveners of the conference are Alfred Bodenheimer and Erik Petry (Center for Jewish Studies) and Maurus Reinkowski (Seminar of Middle Eastern Studies), University of Basel, in cooperation with Hans-Lukas Kieser from The Centre for the History of Violence, University of Newcastle, Australia.

The Balfour Declaration is a major stepping stone in the construction of new order of the Middle East after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, but it is also a notion of what Palestine, Europe and the Middle East might and or should – not – have been. The conference will address the various utopian and dystopian aspects and interpretations of the declaration. The Balfour Declaration has multiplied the projective dimensions of Palestine in the European imagination and has made it part of Europe’s history of identity by embedding the Zionist vision into Western imperial ‘Realpolitik’. A main rationale of the conference is to argue that the Balfour Declaration is emblematic for how convoluted the two entities are that we still conceive today as ‘Europe’ and the ‘Middle East’.

For an extended abstract of the conference’s rationale please see here: balfour-conference_2017_11_1-3_basel

It is the intention of this conference to bring together researchers from various disciplines and fields who, based on free and substantial research (including archival historical research) can contribute to an innovative and responsible thinking on the complex issue of the Balfour Declaration.

Scholars interested to participate are requested to send by 30 June 2016 an exposé (1000 words) and a CV (1 page) to Maurus Reinkowski (maurus.reinkowski@unibas.ch) and Erik Petry (erik.petry@unibas.ch).

Universitaet Basel
Middle Eastern Studies
Maiengasse 51
4056 Basel
Switzerland
Tel. +41 (0)61 267 28 60
Fax +41 (0)61 267 28 64

CfP: Gendering Peace in Europe, 1918-1945

Humanities Research Institute (HRI), The University of Sheffield
Friday 20 – Saturday 21 January 2017

Organised by Dr Julie Gottlieb, together with Dr Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid and Centre for Peace Studies

During and after the First World War, blueprints for peace and a non-violent reordering of society permeated all countries in Europe. They were political, artistic and practical responses to the experience of total war, based on a wide array of different political and religious values and motives. While many of these ideas and initiatives have been studied in some detail, the gendering of peace in Europe during and between the two world wars has not as yet been systematically analysed.

The gendering of initiatives for and debates over peace was a crucial element of European politics from the onset of the Great War to the struggles over appeasement in the run-up to the Second World War, and to the planning for post-war reconstruction. The gendering of peace is more than just the study of women’s pacifist groups – even though this is an important part of it. The notion of a gendering of peace refers to the fact that the different roles, emotions, and forms of agency that are attributed to men and women were crucial parameters for the ways in which a non-violent re-ordering of national polities and international relations was envisaged and legitimised. For example, male conscientious objectors as well as female pacifists were portrayed as ‘effeminate’, thus delineating a gendered space for the debate over non-violent politics. Discourses on nationalism and sovereignty in the wake of the Treaties of Paris in 1919/20 were ripe with gendered metaphors that portrayed the task of peaceful self-determination as a predominantly male endeavour. Debates over maternalism and the role of mothers in society were a crucial site for conceptualising a critique of belligerence.

The organising themes of the conference are as follows:
1) gender and non-violent practices, including the reception of Gandhi’s ideas in Europe;
2) masculine/feminine values and metaphors in debates over national sovereignty and rearmaments;
3) competing spaces and forms of agency for men and women in European pacifism; 4) the gendering and politicization of pacifism and peace campaigns across the political spectrum; 5) the evolution of pacifist commitment in the face of fascism and war.

We will discuss these issues in a two-day conference, to be held at the HRI on 20-21 January, 2017. The plenary speakers have been confirmed*, and we are now inviting abstracts for 20-minute papers to be presented in parallel sessions. We welcome proposals for individual papers or for panels consisting of three papers and a chair/commentator. Papers can cover any European country, take international or transnational viewpoints, or offer comparative case studies, and come from interdisciplinary perspectives. We especially encourage the submission of proposals from postgraduates and early career researchers.

Please submit your proposal with title, abstract of 250-300 words, and a short bio to julie.gottlieb@sheffield.ac.uk by 23 May, 2016.

It is the intention that a selection of the best conference papers will be published – in revised form – in a peer-reviewed journal or as an edited collection. We are grateful for the funding for this event to the Batley Legacy to the University of Sheffield, and we do not anticipate having to charge a conference fee.

*Confirmed plenary speakers:
Emily Baughan, Caitrona Beaumont, Laura Beers, Clarisse Berthezene, Charlotte Bill (filmmaker) with Helen Kay, Akos Farkas, Julie Gottlieb, Susan Grayzel, Richard Overy, Senia Paseta, Ingrid Sharp, Matthew Stibbe, Judith Szapor, Sonja Tiernan.

Further information here.

Research fellowships for PhD students

The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) awards Research fellowships for PhD students for a research stay in Mainz beginning in July 2016 or later.

The IEG awards fellowships for international junior researchers in history, theology and other historical subjects. The IEG promotes research on the historical foundations of Europe from the early modern period to the 20th century, particularly regarding their religious, political and social dimensions. Projects dealing with European communication and transfer processes as well as projects focusing on questions related to theology, church history and intellectual history are particularly welcome.

The deadline for applications is 1 February 2016.

Further information here.

THE book review: Geert Buelens on the poetry of the Great War

Times Higher Education‘s book of the week is Geert Buelens’ Everything to Nothing. Deborah Longworth provides a review of this study of the interrelation of politics and poetry.

Everything to Nothing: The Poetry of the Great War, Revolution and the Transformation of Europe
By Geert Buelens
Translated by David McKay
Verso, 400pp, £20.00
ISBN 9781784781491 and 1507 (e-book)
Published 2 November 2015

For the THE review, please see here.

Conference: Breaking Empires, Making Nations? The First World War and the Reforging of Europe

The Chair of European Civilization at the College of Europe has the pleasure to invite you to an international conference

Breaking Empires, Making Nations? The First World War and the Reforging of Europe

From 14.00 on Tuesday 7 April until 18.30 on Wednesday 8 April 2015 at the Natolin campus of the College of Europe, ul. Nowoursynowska 84, 02-797 Warszawa.

Keynote lecture by Professor Sir Hew Strachan (Oxford): The Ideas of 1914.

R.S.V.P.
e-mail: anna.banach@coleurope.eu
Tel.: 22.54.59.480

Further information: Invitation to WW1 conference
Conference programme: Programme Natolin WW1 conference latest