CFP: Monuments, The Biennial Conference of the Nordic Association of American Studies

Posted on 15 August 2018 by Jeanette Atkinson

25 – 27 April 2019 in Bergen, Norway

Submission deadline: 1 November 2018

Monuments construct the past in the present, and link it to a predetermined version of the future. Monuments tell singular and unified stories, acting as master narratives that impede other voices. Monuments have become some of America’s most important storytellers, giving form to power, but also to particular acts of resistance.

This is perhaps only to be expected, for the word “monument” bears within it the Latin mon, from monēre, which means “to remind,” but also means “to warn.” In its descriptive form “monumental” connotes something massive or imposing, something great in importance, but also expresses a sense of excess, of being overwhelmed. The word itself thus invites a chain of questions: What do monuments call to memory? What might they warn us against? What versions of events do they impose in presenting greatness? Who and what deserves recognition? How can monuments commemorate different or competing pasts? What should be done with monuments that uplift violent pasts?

The NAAS 2019 conference in Bergen on “Monuments” welcomes panel and paper proposals that address monuments and the monumental in relation to American literature, history, politics, media, art and popular culture, transnational and transcultural and comparative approaches. Keeping in mind that not all monuments are made of stone—Hemingway has been called a monument, political symbols and landscapes act as monuments, the literary canon and the Bible are monuments to Western culture—the list of different kinds of monuments is near endless. Some themes may be, but are not limited to:

Conceptualizations of the American past
Preservation and commemoration
Tradition and cultural heritage
Cultural perceptions, shifting attitudes towards the monument
Representation Memory and forgetting
Genre or aesthetic form
Naming
Landscapes, places and spaces
Myth
Resistance to the monument
Inscription
The non-monumental
False memories
Amnesia
Nostalgia
Imaginaries
Ossification
War
Architecture
Photography
Religion
Visibility/invisibility

Please send abstracts and panel proposals to NAASBergen@gmail.com by 15 Sept. 2018. Abstracts for individual panel presentations (20 minutes) should be no longer than 250 words; proposals for panels or workshops should be no longer than 500 words. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out in October.

The conference is open to scholars and students from all countries, but we offer lower registration fees to members of NAAS (Nordic Association for American Studies), EAAS (European Association for American Studies), and ASA (American Studies Association in the U.S.).

A conference website will be made available in the autumn. If you have any questions regarding the conference or your proposal before then, please write to the conference organizers at: NAASBergen@gmail.com.

Conference organizers:
Jena Habegger-Conti, Associate Professor
Western Norway University of Applied Sciences
President, American Studies Association of Norway

Asbjørn Grønstad, Professor
University of Bergen
Vice-President, American Studies Association of Norway

Lene Johannessen, Professor
University of Bergen
Committee Chair, American Studies Association of Norway

CfP: A HERITAGE OF WAR, CONFLICT, AND COMMEMORATION, Change Over Time Journal

Posted on 22 June 2018 by Jeanette Atkinson

The journal Change Over Time: An International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, invites submissions for the Fall 2019 issue.

A HERITAGE OF WAR, CONFLICT, AND COMMEMORATION
Guest Editor: William Chapman

Sites of war and conflict that symbolize collective loss or that served as pivotal moments in national or global history are sometimes elevated to the status of “heritage.” Battlefields, sites of bombings, or places of terrorist attacks are all marked by human tragedy and acts of violence and their interpretation is inherently conflictual. This issue of Change Over Time examines heritage produced by violent acts of destruction and our efforts to commemorate the complex narratives these sites embody.

To support the interpretation of sites characterized by absence, we have often erected commemorative memorials of various forms from plaques and commissioned statuary to the presentation of charred and damaged remnants of what stood before. Examples featuring the vestiges of physical destruction include: the hull of the USS Arizona, sunk during Japan’s 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor; the skeleton of the domed administrative building that marked the zero point of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945; the stabilized walls of St. Michael’s Cathedral in Coventry, a victim of the German Luftwaffe’s November 1940 blitz; and the “Survivors’ Stairs,” the last remaining element of the World Trade Center following its destruction on 11 September 2001. In this issue, we invite contributors to interrogate the types and nature of heritage produced out of war and conflict, the forms of its commemoration, and the challenges associated with its conservation. We encourage contributors to consider the influence of class, politics, and culture in commemorative expressions; the technical and conceptual challenges of conserving objects or places of destruction; inclusive or conflicting (re)interpretation; and evolving perceptions of places over time.

We welcome contributions representing a broad array of geographic, cultural, temporal, and historical contexts that may or may not include vestiges of destruction but that do address the complex attributes of collective place based tragedy. Submissions may include, but are not limited to, case studies, theoretical explorations, and evaluations of current practices or policies as they pertain to the conservation and commemoration of heritage of war and conflict.

Abstracts of 200-300 words are due 1 August 2018. Authors will be notified of provisional paper acceptance by 1 September 2018. Final manuscript submissions will be due late November 2018.

Submission
Articles are generally restricted to 7,500 or fewer words (the approximate equivalent to thirty pages of double-spaced, twelve-point type) and may include up to ten images. See Author Guidelines for full details at cotjournal.com, or email Senior Associate Editor, Kecia Fong at cot@design.upenn.edu for further information.

CFP – Close encounters, displacement and war

Posted on 15 May 2018 by Jeanette Atkinson

Close Encounters in War Journal – n. 1
Call for articles
Thematic Issue: “Close encounters, displacement and war”

Close Encounters in War Journal is a peer-reviewed journal aimed at studying war as a human experience, through interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches ranging from the Humanities to the Social Sciences. The second issue (n. 1) of the journal will be a thematic one, dedicated to the experience of displacement as a consequence of war and conflict, and titled “Close encounters, displacement and war”.

Wars in general are cultural phenomena, among the most ancient and deeply rooted aspects of human cultural evolution: investigating their meaning, by reflecting on the ways we experience wars and conflicts as human beings is therefore essential. Conflictis deeply intertwined with language, culture, instincts, passions, behavioural patterns and with the human ability to represent concepts aesthetically. The concept of “encounter” is therefore fundamental as it involves experience, and as a consequence it implies that war can shape and develop our minds and affect our behaviour by questioning habits and values, prejudices and views of the world.

Displacement is one of the most affecting consequences of war. Armed conflicts move people from one place to another, often trigging extensive phenomena of mobility that can influence societies in depth. The United Nations estimate that in the last few years 65 million people have been displaced by war and prosecution, whereas Malcom Proudfood famously calculated that no less than 60 million people were displaced from their homes during the Second World War and in its aftermath. Among them, there were those who had been forcibly deported by the Nazis, the soldiers who had moved with the armed forces and, most notably, a mass of civilians who became refugees.

Today, the refugee crisis represents one of the most urgent problems internationally, and it has a deep impact on political choices especially in Europe. Fleeing from combat zones has always been the only chance of survival for non-combatants, and refugees are among the most vulnerable groups involved in armed conflicts. Nonetheless, displacement can be multifaceted and not always explicit. Long periods of absence from home (e.g. as members of occupation troops or as POWs) may produce significant psychological and social effects on combatants, who would find it difficult to come back to their society, family and cultural environment. Fighting in colonial armies or being involved in civil wars, too, are sometimes perceived as cultural, social and moral displacement. On a broader scale displacement could trigger interesting phenomena of social, anthropological, cultural and transnational mobility capable of affecting national identities and shaping cultures.

Displacement is such a critical problem for modern societies that many institutions, scholarly or otherwise, commit to the study and research of migration from the ethical, legal and humanitarian point of view.

Issue n. 1 of CEIW Journal will aim to investigate displacement by exploring its facets both on a micro-scale, by studying individual testimonies and experiences, and on a broad scale by observing macro-phenomena of displacement throughout history with comparative, critical and cultural methodologies.

We invite articles which analyse the experience of displacement from ancient to modern and contemporary periods, from the perspective of the encounter, reaching beyond the study of military tactics and strategy and focusing on the way human beings ‘encounter’ each other with and within the experience of displacement. Contributions are invited to promote discussion and scholarly research from established scholars, early-career researchers, and from practitioners who have encountered irregular warfare in the course of their activities.

The topics that can be investigated include but are not limited to:
· Social impact of war displacement
· Displacement and transnational history
· Psychological aspects of war displacement
· Violence and trauma
· Cultural encounters and identity
· Displacement and colonial wars, civil wars, international conflicts
· War captivity and other forms of deportation
· Forced displacement, war crimes, ethnic cleansing
· Displacement and transitional justice
· Representations of otherness, race, and gender
· Religion and politics
· Testimonies, personal narratives
· Oral history and memory studies

The editors of Close Encounters in War Journal invite the submission of 300 words abstracts in English by 1st June 2018. Decisions will be made by 30th June 2018 and the completed articles (6000-8000 words including footnotes, bibliography excluded, in English) will be expected by 1st November 2018. All contributions will go under a process of blind peer-review.

Abstracts can be sent to: simona.tobia@closeencountersinwar.com and gianluca.cinelli@closeencountersinwar.com

CfP: MGHG Conference: Museums, Collections & Conflict, 1500-2010

Posted on 18 January 2018 by Jeanette Atkinson

MGHG Biennial Conference 2018, National Maritime Museum, 13-14 July 2018

Keynote speaker: Annie Coombes, Professor of Material and Visual Culture, Birkbeck, University of London

Museums have been profoundly shaped by war and armed conflict, and have also played a significant part in shaping understandings and memories about them. Yet there has been little sustained examination of the way museums in war and war in museums has played out. Since Gaynor Kavanagh’s foundational study Museums and the First World War in 1994, and with the publication this year of Catherine Pearson’s similarly ground-breaking Museums in the Second World War, it is clear that museums have played and can play an important role in helping society address such crisis situations. On the home front, for example, museums have helped society prepare for war and armed conflict. In leading commemoration in the aftermath of war and armed conflict, museums have helped society come to terms with what happened, understand why it happened, and remember sacrifices. Yet museums have equally served as arenas where issues such as commemoration have been contested and negotiated, and where particular narratives legitimising war and conflict have been developed. This conference hopes to address a broad range of questions, including on collecting (in) war and armed conflict, on the deliberate targeting and destruction or safeguarding of museums and cultural property, and the broader range of institutions brought forth or which are strongly influenced by war and armed conflict.

We seek papers which particularly address but are not restricted to the following questions over a period from the Early Modern to the end of the twentieth century:

What have museums done during periods of conflict and what has happened to them? Have they been responsible for morale, have they been targets of attack, have they physically moved and how has their staffing been affected?
How have museums and collections acted to commemorate conflict?
In what ways have wars and other conflicts affected museums’ and collectors’ collecting activities, positively or negatively? How have wars and conflicts been collected, and by whom?
How have museums represented war, civil war and other conflicts such as rebellions? Have museums promoted peace by interpreting war?
How have museums of conflict, of the armed forces and of weaponry/armouries developed historically?

We welcome proposals for papers which deal with the history of museums and collecting in a British, European or wider context or which address the relationships between different geographical areas.

Paper proposals should be for papers of 20 minutes’ length. Proposals should be 250 words max and include the name, contact details and affiliation (if applicable) of the speaker.
Panel proposals are strongly encouraged and should consist of a panel title, proposals for 3 papers, along with a rationale for the panel theme, and contact details and affiliations (if applicable) of all participants. Please indicate whether you will provide a chair for your session or not (it does not matter which).
Poster proposals are also welcomed. Please contact Kate Hill (khill@lincoln.ac.uk) for more information.

All the above proposals should be sent to contact@mghg.info by 1 March 2018. Please note all speakers and poster presenters will be expected to pay the conference registration fee.

Further information here.

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

Posted on 18 December 2017 by Jeanette Atkinson

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: War and Imprisonment, May 2018, New York

Posted on 10 October 2017 by Jeanette Atkinson

The capture and confinement of human beings has been—and remains—a central feature of warfare and periods of mass violence both within and between nation-states and among non-state actors. Prisoners apprehended and held during times of conflict—whether military or political—have been both blessing and curse to their keepers. While often valued as cheap labor and lucrative bargaining chips, the high costs—economic, social, political, and environmental—associated with mass imprisonment continue to challenge even the best organized bureaucratic states. This conference seeks to explore these historical and contemporary dynamics across geographic time and space. We welcome interdisciplinary scholarship on topics including, but not limited to, the following:

Prisoner of war camps
Prison towns
Civilian prisoners in wartime
Political imprisonment
Prison culture
Prison violence
Treatment of prisoners
Prison labor in wartime
Race, class, gender, and prison in wartime
Prison architecture and design
Environmental impacts of mass imprisonment

The one-day conference will be held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, located at 365 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, on Friday, May 11, 2018. We envision a program free of geographical, chronological, or methodological restraints.

Individual paper proposals of no more than 300 words and a short CV should be sent to Clarence (Jeff) Hall (chall@qcc.cuny.edu) and Sarah Danielsson (sdanielsson@gc.cuny.edu) no later than December 15, 2017. Accepted presenters will be notified in early 2018. Interested presenters may also be considered for publication in an anthology tentatively scheduled for 2019.

Globalising and Localising the Great War

World War One Oxford University

Tag Archives: War