Tag Archives: literature

CfP: Third Issue of the Journal of Studies in History & Culture

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Events to commemorate the centenary of the First World War have been organized since 2014 and would continue through 2018. It has already sparked of various retellings on the war in fiction and celluloid. The third issue of JSHC attempts to offer renewed perspectives on the First World War. While war and society is the general theme for this issue, all the content in our issues have never been restricted to the pre-decided theme alone. Therefore, we welcome contributors for wide ranging perspectives and discussions on general issues beyond the present theme.

To understand war in the longue durée one needs a comprehensive understanding. We encourage papers which examine comprehensive studies of war using panoptican views, by means of theoretical, political or philosophical scalpels; and papers from diplomacy, strategy and international relations perspectives, as well as papers on individual lives. Besides, papers from a military history vantage point are equally welcome. Papers from a memory studies perspective looking at collective memorialisation around or with relation to a particular war would be particularly interesting for us to consider for publication.

We are also looking for papers from comparative literary perspectives which study literature produced during war or with war as a thematic reference. Analyses of diverse hagiographies and/or their influence on formal histories could also be an important aspect to this. Papers from an environmental perspective are equally welcome.

For historians war has been both a historical schema, within which one could study societal changes as well as a chassis, to locate micro histories of soldiers, technology, techniques, formations, strategies, etc. The moral supremacy attached to professional warriors, wrote Marc Bloch, continuing till present times is symbolic of the divergence between the peasant and the knight right from the emergence of the feudal age. Bloch fought in both World Wars. He was a part of the French Army in the First World War. The experiences affected his personality and his historical output. His experiences during the war produced Memoirs of the War, 1914 – 1915 and is also said to have influenced Réflexions d’un historien sur les fausses nouvelles de la guerre (1922). The Second World War was more defining though. From the campaign of June 1940 to a part of the resistance press, the Second World War affected him personally as a Jew in Germany. This time there was to be no memoir, no Réflexions. He was tortured by the Germans in 1944, inside the fortress of Montluc and finally assassinated on June 16 at St. Didier, near Lyons. In line with Bloch’s work we encourage authors to submit papers looking at variety of topics right from propaganda to underlying conditions of society, in a comparative historical framework.

That said, papers not related to the theme are also welcome.

Increasing budget cuts in the humanities have been seen by many as part of a larger plan to dissolve the humanities. Therefore, papers situating war within the context of epistemological invasions are also welcome.

However, such attempts at dissolution are not merely a warning sign for the humanities but higher education in general, and anything certified as unprofitable by the market. With market forces gnawing into whatever little space for decision making was left within the academia, JSHC sees this as a moment of opportunity – opportunity to seek greater collaboration among disciplines, wherein they can come together in evolving mutually beneficial frameworks for academic exchanges, as well as myriad forms of resistance on scholarly fora to stand united in solidarity against the onslaught.

The last date for submission is 30th of November, 2017. Check out the previous issues on www.jshc.org. Papers can be sent in to editors.jshc@gmail.com. For any specific inquiries write to info@jshc.org.

CfP: Artistic Expressions and the Great War: A Hundred Years On

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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

New publications: Literature & the Great War. Toby Garfitt, Oxford & Nicolas Bianchi, Montpellier

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Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature (STTCL) (http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/) is committed to publishing high quality, anonymously peer reviewed articles written in English on post-1900 literature in French, German, and Spanish. All issues are available online.

Recently published special issue: 41.2 (Summer 2017): Writing 1914-1918. National Responses to the Great War. “From the National Context to its Margins: When the World Used Literature to Respond to the Great War”.

Guest Editors: Toby Garfitt & Nicolas Bianchi

Articles on Canada and Argentina as well as France, Germany and Britain. Full table of contents available here.

By shedding light on some original responses to the Great War that are today hardly known, and by asking the same questions of many works written in contexts which were radically different, this STTCL special issue advocates for a genuinely comparative approach to this literature. Born in a context of nationalist withdrawal, these cultural objects also had a paradoxically wide circulation (due to early translations, commentaries, literary reactions, and so on), which is why study of these apparently isolated writers is so valuable.

 

Writing the Great War / Comment écrire la Grande Guerre?
Francophone and Anglophone Poetics / Poétiques francophones et anglophones
Edited by Nicolas Bianchi and Toby Garfitt

Series: Romanticism and after in France / Le Romantisme et après en France, Vol. 27
Series Editor: Patrick McGuinness

Peter Lang, Oxford, 2017. XIV, 366 pp.. ISBN: 978-1-78707-198-8 (print)
Available to purchase in ePDF and ePUB formats here.

For France the First World War, or Great War, was a war of national self-defence, but for Britain it was not. Does that mean that French literary treatments of this unimaginably destructive war were very different from British ones? Not necessarily – but much can be learned from considering both traditions side by side, something that is rarely done.

The essays collected in this bilingual volume, by a range of scholars working on literature and history on both sides of the Channel, show that while the wider purposes of the war are striking for their absence in both French and British traditions, there are many common strands: realistic narratives of the trenches, humour as a safety-valve, imagination and creativity. Yet there are differences, too: for instance, there is plenty of French poetry about the war, but no real equivalent of the British «war poets». The volume looks at iconic figures like Owen, Brooke, Barbusse, Apollinaire and Proust, but also at a number of lesser known writers, and includes a study of «poetry of colour», recognising the active contribution of some four million non-Europeans to the war effort. The book includes a preface by the eminent war historian Sir Hew Strachan.

Engagée dans une guerre défensive sur ses frontières, la France connut une Grande Guerre bien différente de celle avec laquelle composèrent ses alliés britanniques. Faut-il en conclure que les deux nations furent amenées à produire des réponses au conflit radicalement différentes? Peut-on dégager des traditions nationales ou des tendances transnationales ouvrant la voie à des comparaisons encore rarement esquissées par la critique littéraire? C’est le pari des contributions de ce volume bilingue, réunissant autour de la question: «comment écrire la Grande Guerre?», les articles de spécialistes francophones et anglophones des domaines historique et littéraire. Il montre la variété des thématiques partagées par les deux traditions littéraires: récits réalistes des tranchées, usage de l’humour comme d’un exutoire salutaire, imagination et créativité; et souligne la présence de différences notables, comme l’absence de mythification en France de la poésie de 14, pourtant elle-aussi produite en masse tout au long de la guerre. L’ouvrage, tout en donnant une place de choix aux écrivains de premier ordre (Owen, Brooke, Barbusse, Apollinaire ou Proust), tente d’offrir quelque visibilité à un certain nombre d’auteurs moins connus, au nombre desquels des auteurs de couleur, à qui leur contribution à l’effort de guerre n’aura pas valu la reconnaissance littéraire attendue. La préface a été rédigée par Sir Hew Strachan, grand spécialiste de l’histoire de la période.

Nicolas Bianchi is a normalien and agrégé de lettres modernes, teaching at Université Montpellier III.
Toby Garfitt is Fellow and Tutor in French at Magdalen College, Oxford.

CfP: Defining Canada, 1867-2017: values, practices and representations

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International Conference / Congress of The French Association of Canadian Studies
Paris, 14-16 June 2017

On July 1st 2017, Canada will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation. On this historic occasion, the French Association of Canadian Studies (AFEC), in conjunction with the Research Center on Anglophone Cultures (LARCA) of Université Paris Diderot, will hold a conference to explore the evolution of Canada and what defines it. This conference intents to favor the historical perspective of the longue durée, by examining not only what defines Canada in 2017, but by comparing this with the way it was defined in 1867, at the time of Confederation, as well as in 1967, at the time of the centennial. To do so, the conference will be organized around three guiding lines that correspond to the values, the practices and the representations through which Canada is defined.

Abstracts can be submitted individually or as a panel (group of 4 proposals around the same topic), in French or in English.

Deadline to submit abstracts (400 words) along with a short bio (100 words), preferably in Word format: 1st July 2016

Notification of acceptance: 30 September 2016

Contact: Dr. Laurence CROS
Associate Professor, Canadian Studies,
Université Paris Diderot (Paris 7)
Email: laurence.cros@univ-paris-diderot.fr

Selected papers from this conference will be published in the journal Études Canadiennes / Canadian Studies, first as a paper issue, followed one year later by a free-access electronic issue on http://eccs.revues.or/

Further information here.

New Book on Ethics and Literature of the Great War

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A new book on the First World War, Etica e letteratura della Grande Guerra: rappresentazioni della crisi (Ethics and Literature of the Great War. Representations of the Crisis) (Napoli, Marchese editore), edited by Patrizia Piredda and Gianluca Cinelli has just been published.

For further information, see here.

Workshop – Translating World War One: The Case of T. E. Lawrence

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Workshop organised by Mary Bryden, fellow at the Paris IAS

Date et heure:
12/05/2015 – 09:30 – 17:30

Lieu: Institut d’études avancées de Paris, 17 quai d’Anjou, 75004 Paris

During the current Centenary of the First World War, we are commemorating the first mass industrialised war. If the number of victims was unprecedented, so too was the manner in which this quickly became a literary war. Amongst those caught up in the conflict were many who wished to describe this radical break with normality. Some of these narrations appeared in the course of the conflict itself, while others formed part of the second wave of war literature, between 1929 and 1930. The prevalent literary model is that of the muddy fields and trenches of the Western Front. However, this journée d’étude will concentrate upon the Middle Eastern Front and, in particular, on the person of T. E. Lawrence, whose war book Seven Pillars of Wisdom describes his participation in the Arab Revolt from 1916 to 1918.

Further information, programme and registration.

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association: Panel on WWI in Literature

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In light of the centenary of World War I last year, this panel at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association, New Mexico, United States, looks to reflect on the significance of the war as a cultural artifact. This panel explores representations of World War I both contemporaneously and as reflective literary and artistic process throughout the following century. All languages, literatures, film, art, and other representations will be considered.

Please submit abstracts ASAP to hillanna@isu.edu. Deadline: 20 March 2015.