Tag Archives: material culture

CfP: The First World War at sea: conflict, culture and commemoration

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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: EAA 2015 Session: Dark Heritage – the Archaeology of Internment and Forced Wartime Migration

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21st Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists
Glasgow 2-5 September 2015

Deadline for submissions: 16 February 2015
Call for papers link here.

Last year’s EAA conference session ‘Archaeologies of War(s)’ considered a century of conflict from a perspective focused mainly, though not exclusively, on battlefield archaeology. The last one hundred years has also seen the making of war on civilians developed to an unprecedented level and it is perhaps timely to contemplate the cultural legacy of civilian detention, internment and forced migration which has become a significant aspect of industrialised and sometimes global war. Systematised restriction of civilian populations, sometimes involving privation and even mistreatment, was by no means a new departure at the onset of WWI, and was pursued with still greater purpose during WWII. Even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has not entirely prevented 21st century iterations of such behaviours, particularly where political and terrorist issues are involved.The deliberate displacement, concentration and incarceration of mass populations had many side-effects which have left varied physical and cultural legacies among both victims and perpetrators. For most it was a shocking or sometimes even fatal experience; for others an opportunity to seek diversions which resulted in extraordinary cultural and artistic achievement. For those responsible it has led variously to guilt, redemption, cover-up and acknowledgement. In many cases there is a distinctive residue of sudden mixing or removal of peoples and their material and ephemeral cultures.We consider the archaeological, museological and interpretative consequences of this dark heritage through contributions focused mainly, though not exclusively, on internment and forced displacement during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Further information here.