Tag Archives: Memorials

CfP: The People’s Conference: The Transnational Legacies of 1919

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Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston (Ontario)
November 7-8 2019

Download bilingual CfP: Symposium 2019 – Call for paper (bilingual)

On the hundredth anniversary of the world changing Paris Peace Conference and of the Treaty of Versailles, the Department of History of the Royal Military College of Canada is hosting a conference to examine their impact on transnational and international movements and institutions. Most scholarship to date has focussed on what happened in Paris in 1919 from the perspective of the coming of the Second World War, and on the inability of the Treaty of Versailles and of the League of Nations to prevent a second global conflagration. Only recently has more attention been paid to the explosion of international and transnational institutions and organizations created in aftermath of 1919. The Paris Peace Conference was the first international conference to draw upon the input of individuals and private groups, while others met in parallel conferences to discuss what was happening or should be happening within the halls of Versailles. In that sense, Paris 1919 opened the door to popular participation in global treaty making that continues to this day.

The organizing committee solicits proposals for papers on the short and long term legacies that the Paris Peace Conference (1919) has had on international and transnational movements and institutions over the past century. Areas of study might include, but are not limited to:

• International, transnational, non-governmental organizations;
• Human Rights;
• Disarmament and Rules of Armed Conflict;
• Veterans’ Rehabilitation/Demobilization;
• Human migration (Refugees, Sanctuary);
• Peace (including peacekeeping and peace enforcement);
• Gender and international peace and security;
• Memory and memorials.

Preference will be given to historical studies highlighting new perspectives or new fields of study.
Proposals in French or English should include a 200 or 300 words abstract accompanied by a one-page CV.

Proposals should be emailed to symposium2019@rmc-cmr.ca no later than 30 November 2018.

For more information, please contact Dr. Kevin Brushett (kevin.brushett@rmc.ca), Dr. Marie-Michèle Doucet (marie-michele.doucet@rmc.ca) or Dr. Emanuele Sica (Emanuele.sica@rmc.ca).

CfP: The First World War in Italy and Beyond: History, Legacy and Memory (1918–2018)

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30 November – 1 December 2018
Italian Institute of Culture, London

Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy

Download CfP: CFP – ASMI 2018

The conference will explore the history, legacy and memory of the First World War in Italy from 1918 to 2018. As the War was one of the formative experiences of the modern Italian nation, the aim is to place the conflict in a longer chronological perspective and to highlight its lasting impact from a range of viewpoints. Drawing on recent innovations in the historiography, the conference will shift focus away from the battlefields towards hitherto neglected areas of study, including the experience of civilians and everyday life, the transition from war to peace, and the post-war climate and reconstruction. It will shed light on how the memory of WWI shaped Italy’s national identity and served political ends during the Fascist period and after the Second World War. The intention is also to escape the confines of national historiography by placing Italy in comparative and transnational contexts. Thus, the centenary presents an opportunity to look with fresh eyes at the mark left by the War on the history, politics and society of Italy.

We welcome proposals from scholars working in a variety of disciplines including history, literature, film, politics, anthropology, art, economics, sociology and geography.

Panels might include, but are not limited to:
• The immediate aftermath of WW1 (1918–1922) and the rise of social conflict, political violence and Fascism
• The creation of the League of Nations and the emergence of pacifism, humanitarianism and internationalism
• The experience of veterans in the post-war period
• New historiographical approaches to the study of Italy and WW1
• Global, transnational and comparative perspectives
• Local, regional and national experiences
• Gender, both femininity and masculinity
• Family and societal ties
• Changes to ideas of nationhood, democracy, citizenship and community after WW1
• The legacy of WWI under Fascism
• Parallels between the aftermath of WW1 and the aftermath of WW2
• The material heritage of the War: monuments, memorials and cemeteries
• Italy’s commemorations of the centenary in national or transnational contexts

The organizers welcome proposals for individual papers and for panels composed of 3 speakers. They reserve the right to break up and re-structure proposed panels.

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Prof. Gunda Barth-Scalmani (University of Innsbruck)
Author of numerous works on Italian-Austrian relations and the experiences of women during WWI, including Ein Krieg – Zwei Schützengräben, Österreich – Italien und der Erste Weltkrieg in den Dolomiten 1915–1918 (Bozen 2005) and Militärische und zivile Kriegserfahrungen 1914–1918 (Innsbruck, 2010).

Dr. Marco Mondini (University of Padua/Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento)
Author of numerous bestselling books on Italy and WW1, including most recently Il Capo. La Grande Guerra del generale Luigi Cadorna (Il Mulino 2017) and La guerra italiana. Partire, raccontare, tornare 1914-18 (Il Mulino 2014). He is a frequent contributor to programmes on Rai Storia, e.g. http://www.raistoria.rai.it/articoli/cadorna-il-capo/32462/default.aspx

Please send an abstract of max. 250 words and a short biography to: asmi.conference1918@gmail.com
Abstracts can be both in English and in Italian.
The closing date for receipt of abstracts is 1 June 2018

Accepted speakers will be required to join ASMI, which includes subscription to the journal Modern Italy.

Organising Committee: Selena Daly (University College Dublin), Carlotta Ferrara degli Uberti (University College London), Hannah Malone (Freie Universität Berlin), Martina Salvante (University of Warwick)

CfP: Why Remember? Ruins, Remains and Reconstructions in Times of War and Its Aftermath

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3-Day Symposium in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, June 27th-29th, 2018, Hotel Europe

Keynote Speaker: Donald Weber, Photographer

Sponsored by London College of Communication, University of the Arts London; Salem State University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, De Montfort University, Leicester UK; WARM Festival, Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Organizers:
Dr. Stephenie Young, Salem State University, USA
Admir Jugo, Ph.D. Candidate, Durham University, UK
Dr. Paul Lowe, University of the Arts, London, UK
Professor Kenneth Morrison, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Velma Saric, Post-Conflict Research Center, Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina

In his book In Praise of Forgetting: Historical Memory and Its Ironies, David Rieff questions whether the age-long “consensus that it is moral to remember, immoral to forget” still stands in our contemporary era. What should we remember, what should we forget, and why? Do we need to reconfigure the way that we think about memory and its potential impact on issues such as reconciliation and healing in the wake of war? Is memory impotent as a social, political, or aesthetic tool? Rieff’s questions appear more pertinent than ever as wars and conflicts continue to rage in many parts of the world with no end in sight.

These questions of memory (and forgetting) are intensely political and have far-reaching consequences. Yet, how do they reverberate in the context of post-war societies, post-conflict reconciliation, conflict prevention, questions of memory and past events? To what extent do we remember the past and how do we choose what to remember and why we remember? How could and should (consciously and unconsciously) memory processes shape the present and future? How might public institutions (such as museums and other heritage sites that support education/awareness) deal with the past? What is the difference between commemoration and memorialization? Where do they intersect and how might they impact the process of reconciliation and prevention?

For summer 2018 we continue the conversations on aesthetics that we initiated in our 2017 conference but with a more specific focus on “ruins, remains and reconstructions.” In his book The Texture of Memory James E. Young states that public art can often been static and is “seemingly
frozen
face
in
the
landscape”.
In light of this, we are interested in papers that consider the contemporary status of not only what “ruins or remains” are and how they are construed, but also the ways that post-conflict societies remember through reconstructions (material—such as renovations—or philosophical or theoretical). What are landscapes of memory? How do reconstructions remember memory? What kind of art is produced in conversation with remains and ruins? What is the role of remains (human/material) and ruins in relation to the communities that live with them? How are communities established around memorials and what impact might a memorial have on a community? What kind of role does visual culture, such as photography, play in these considerations?

We seek papers from a wide-range of historical and geographical spaces that address the discursive limits of contemporary memory studies, particularly drawing on these areas of study:

Film/media studies
Museum studies/objects/ New Materialism
Visual arts including photography
Literature/Narrative
Music/Performance
Necropolitics/Forensics/Anthropology/Archaeology
Politics and aesthetics

**Interdisciplinary approaches are especially encouraged.

We welcome formal paper abstract submissions from early career researchers and post-docs as well as established scholars. We encourage applications from a range of academics, current PhD students, particularly from those outside of Western European institutions. All papers will be delivered in English.

Paper proposals should include:
• author name(s), affiliation(s) and contact email,
• paper title,
• a paper abstract (200 words max),
• and short bio (200 words max).

This academic conference is part of the larger WARM festival, which takes place in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina each summer, and “is dedicated to war reporting, war art, war memory. WARM is bringing together people – journalists, artists, historians, researchers, activists – with a common passion for ‘telling the story with excellence and integrity’.” See here for more information.

Registration cost: 150 Euros. Concessionary rates are available for all graduate students, for faculty applying from non-EU/US institutions, and for those can present a case for reduced fees. Information about hostels and hotels will be provided for participants upon acceptance.

Please submit your proposals no later than February 15th, 2018 to why.remember.conference@gmail.com.

Decisions will be made by the beginning of March.

CfP: “War, the Body, and Communities”, German Studies Association 2018; “War and Violence Network”

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War experiences and legacies affect individual bodies and broader communities. War violates and traumatizes bodies as it simultaneously destroys and builds communities. War contributes different narratives about the body and communities in relation to conflict and violence. Our panel series explores themes that includes the forming and disciplining of bodies for war, the disfiguration of bodies during war, “disembodied” contemporary warfare, and the disappearances of the body during war. The body can carry the actual scars of violence and become a metaphor for the terrain of pain. The body can be a weapon as well as a victim of war; it can execute, document, archive, aesthetize, and politicize war. Wartime communities can develop from the idea of a shared “bodily” wartime experience. Communities represent a dynamic entity constructed by common encounters, attitudes, and emotions and can include victims, mourners, widows, protesters, veterans, survivors, perpetrators; and their respective representations, experiences, and negotiations with their own (or other) bodies. Papers could explore how war can build and undermine “war communities” and how aesthetic and historical works about war can shape a sense of community. Proposals can address the topic in the time span from the Medieval Ages to today.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Militarizing bodies and shaping collectives
War wounds and victims, broken bodies, refugees
The image of the war hero and its role in nation building
War, fashion and uniforms, rationing and consumption
Sensing war, War and ecstasy
Literary works on war, body, and communities
Search for bodies and missing communities
Gender and the body and gendering (war) communities
Visual renderings and experience-making – enactments, films, monuments, memorials

We invite proposals that address research associated with the body and/or community within the German context. Such fields as History, Literary and Media Studies, Art and Cultural History, Visual, Film and Museum Studies, Musicology, Gender Studies and other disciplines.

Please note two important GSA rules: All panel participants including the commentator and moderator must be registered GSA members by February 10, 2017. No individual at the GSA Conference may give more than one paper/participate in a seminar or participate in more than two separate capacities.

Please send abstracts, brief c.v., and AV requests, if applicable, by Jan. 19, 2018 to both network coordinators Katherine Aaslestad (Katherine.Aaslestad@mail.wvu.edu) and Kathrin Maurer (kamau@sdu.dk) who will review paper proposals. All applicants will be informed by late January. This allows proposals which cannot be included in the network panels to be submitted directly to the GSA by the overall deadline of February, 15 2018.

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: ESSHC 2018 Session: Digitising visitor encounters with warfare

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European Social Science History Conference 2018 (Queen’s University, Belfast, April 4-7, 2018)
Session title: Digitising visitor encounters with warfare
Session Organisers: Dr Ria Dunkley, University of Glasgow and Laurie Slegtenhorst MA, Erasmus University Rotterdam

War has been a popular tourist attraction for centuries (Seaton, 1996), while throughout the 20th-century, warfare and allied memorabilia arguably constituted the world’s largest tourist attraction (Smith, 1996). This situation shows little sign of abating within the present day, when visitation of sites such as the Battlefields of Culloden (UK) and those associated with World War I and II continues to increases (Dunkley, 2011). Yet, for many visitors, understanding the events that have occurred at historical places can be difficult. This is particularly the case for ancient battle sites, where historical relics associated with the event are no longer visible. Due to the increase centrality of visual representations in present day society, publics often desire affective connection to the past, involving tacit involvement with a history that can be touched, heard and smelt, as well as seen (Landsberg, 2015). Digital tools, such as apps, virtual reality, augmented reality and 3D animation arguably provide visitors with totalising, immersive experiences of history and enable an appreciation of the multiple layers of history at war-related sites. Yet, despite a recent proliferation in the number of sites harnessing digital technology to augment the visitor experience, little research has focused upon the way such sites are experienced by the visitors who use these digital tools.

This session seeks papers that explore how different types of visitors engage with history at war-related sites in diverse ways. Questions that will be central to the session include: how do visitors use digital tools to navigate sites of war?; how is the experience history enhanced through digital mediation?; do digital tools engage visitors with history at a deeper, more critical level?; can digital technology enhance understandings of complex historical events? and; is it possible to cater to the needs of homogenous groups of visitors (including, school children, special interest tourists, serendipitous visitors, veterans, survivors and victims’ relatives) through harnessing digital technology?

Proposed research topics include, but are not limited to:

Visitor experiences of using digital technology to navigate sites associate with war (including sites of actual events, as well as museums, memorials and sites of internment);
The significance of memory and pre-conceptions to how digital representations are engaged with;
The representation of divergent identities within digital applications developed for war-related sites (including representations of gender, class and race);
The potentials of digitisation of war-related sites for formal and informal learning (particularly in terms of democracy education);
Innovative methodologies for understanding how the visitor experience is mediated by digital technology at war-related sites.

Presentations should be approximately twenty minutes in length. Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Laurie Slegtenhorst (slegtenhorst@eshcc.eur.nl) and Ria Dunkley (ria.dunkley@glasgow.ac.uk) by April, 23, 2017. Submissions should also include: Author name, institutional affiliation, e-mail and mailing address. Please do also get in touch with any questions, or to discuss alternative forms of presentation.

For more information on the conference, please visit: https://esshc.socialhistory.org/

New blog for Oxford’s WWI Centenary ‘Continuations and Beginnings’ website

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Hanna Smyth, who is completing her DPhil on the relationship between Commonwealth War Graves Commission sites and identity, recently contributed to the University of Oxford’s WWI Centenary ‘Continuations and Beginnings’ website. Her blog, WWI Memorials of the British Empire: Identity and Memory on the Western Front, can be accessed here.