CfP: Performing War: Acts of Transgression and Transformation

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DeAnna Toten Beard, Baylor University
Jenna L. Kubly, Independent Scholar

This body will convene a diverse group of scholars, methodologies, and research interests to participate in an ongoing conversation about the complex relationship between war and performance. In concert with the larger conference theme, the working group is interested in projects that consider the many ways that transgressive acts associated with war—for example, physical destruction, psychic violence, border crossing, political betrayal—both transform performance and are transformed by/in performance.

Papers might address how theatre, drama, civic performances, musicals, operas, popular entertainments, re-enactments, and dance relate to the following ideas:

How does the environment of violence impact theatre in a war-zone? On the Home Front? In a P.O.W. camp or concentration camp?
What are the artistic and ethical implications of presenting images of wartime violence on stage?
How has war-time drama supported soldiers and citizens negotiating the transition from peace time to war time—and then back again?
How might war and war-time theater offer a liminal space for explorations of transgender/sexuality?
How do voices of pacifism and reconciliation become transgressive during the climate of war?
How does the literal act of border crossing by combatants in times of war create opportunities for transcultural performance? How is artistic border crossing made suspect by war?
How do translations or transmissions of war-time texts operate as propaganda, modes of resistance, or documents of “truth-telling”?

The goal of the working group is to form a community of scholars and practitioners invested in this unifying theme. Through two rounds of paper exchanges with small subgroups, each participant is offered the change to give and receive feedback and suggestions on the completed 15-20 page work. During the conference session, participants will caucus in groups over questions suggested by the convenors, before coming together for a discussion that will include all participants.

Images, video, music or other multimedia to accompany the papers are strongly encouraged, but the participant must be able share it with the group prior to the conference (i.e. via a website link or Dropbox). There will be no media provision in the conference session.

For any specific questions, please contact the working group convenors at DeAnna_Toten_Beard@baylor.edu and JLKubly@yahoo.com. Please note that all submissions must be received formally through the ASTR website, at http://www.astr.org/page/16_WGSubmissions. The form will allow you to indicate second and third -choice working groups if you wish; if you do so, note that there is a space for you to indicate how your work will fit into those groups. The deadline for receipt of working group proposals is 1 June 2016 and we anticipate that participants will be notified of their acceptance no later than 30 June. As this is the first year of this new process, please contact the conference organizers at astr2016@astr.org if you have any questions about the process.

The Conference and Organisation

The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) is a U.S.-based professional organization that fosters scholarship on worldwide theatre and performance, both historical and contemporary.

The 2016 Conference will be held November 3-6, 2016
Minneapolis Marriott City Center
30 S 7th St
Minneapolis, MN 55402

Conference: Peripheral Visions: European Soldiers and Cultural Encounters in the Long Nineteenth Century

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Trinity College Dublin
2 – 4 June 2016

From the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, European powers mounted military expeditions to the eastern periphery of the continent and to the edge of what they considered to be the ‘civilized’ world. From the Napoleonic expeditions to Italy, Egypt and Russia to the British conquest of Egypt in the 1880s, and from the German Empire’s involvement with the Ottoman Empire to the British and French campaigns in Macedonia and Palestine during the First World War, European soldiers ventured into exotic lands. In so doing, they experienced the unknown while also confronting their own cultural pre-conceptions about the territories they visited and the people against or amongst whom they fought. Often the places they invested were redolent with European cultural significance (Rome, Egypt, Jerusalem), a significance belied by the modern realities of those same sites. In making war, they mapped a Europe of their own imagining. Yet because they engaged in the overt violence of war and the more covert violence of occupation, their encounters were not those of tourists, traders or travel writers, though they certainly contained elements of all three. There was a military specificity to what they saw, to whom they encountered and to how they did so. The encounters were important for the soldiers themselves, for their home countries and for the societies to which they went. Indeed, in terms of numbers and influence, these militarized encounters were one of the most important ways in which Europeans engaged with the eastern and southern periphery of their continent in the course of the long 19th century.

The conference is open to interested scholars. We request intending participants to register (with no charge) in advance. In order to do so, and for all further information, please contact: Dr Fergus Robson (frobson@tcd.ie) or Dr Mahon Murphy (murphm73@tcd.ie)

Further information and conference programme: Peripheral Visions Conference Programme

CfP: Innovation, Adaptation and Change in War

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Innovation, Adaptation and Change in War
New Research in Military History: A Conference for Postgraduate and Early Career Historians

26th November 2016
Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London

This conference, organised by the British Commission for Military History in association with the University of Sussex and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, intends to highlight current research being undertaken by postgraduate and early career scholars in the field of military history and related disciplines.

This is the British Commission for Military History’s seventh annual New Research Conference giving postgraduate and early career scholars an excellent opportunity to meet, share new ideas and discuss the latest research.

The conference theme focuses on change in war, innovation and society. This might include matters relating to military organisations, technology and culture as well subjects concerned with strategy, tactics and social change. Proposals that move beyond solely British issues and engage global, colonial and post-colonial perspectives are particularly encouraged.

The conference organisers will also be very happy to receive papers on other topics related to military history, broadly defined, including those that deal with gender, society, identity and race.

Proposals (c. 300 words) for papers of 20 minutes should be submitted, along with an academic CV, to the organisers at bcmhnrc@gmail.com by Sunday 31st July 2016. The organisers welcome proposals for panel submissions as well as individual papers.

Contributors will automatically be considered for publication in a special issue of the British Journal for Military History.

Further information here.

Lecture series: Armenia. Life and Study of an Enduring Culture

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Armenian General Benevolent Union Lecture Series in commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and in celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship in Armenian Studies at Pembroke College in the University of Oxford Pembroke College, Oxford, Trinity Term 2016

Wk 6: 31 May, 7:00-8:30pm (Tuesday) Pichette Auditorium
The Armenian Genocide in Kurdish and Turkish Literature
Dr Özlem Belçim Galip
(Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow, University of Oxford)

Wk 7: 9 June, 7:00-8:30pm (Thursday) Harold Lee Room
The Silent Books Project: The Armenian Genocide and its Perception
Suzan Meryem Kalayci (PhD Candidate, European University, Florence)

Further information about the full series here: 00. TT16 AGBU Lectures Dates

CfP: Remembering Muted Voices: Conscience, Dissent, Resistance, and Civil Liberties in World War I through Today

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Conference Dates: October 19-21, 2017
National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, Kansas City, MO, USA

During the Great War, many people questioned the claims of the Allied and Central powers, desired a negotiated peace, opposed intervention, refused to support the war effort, and/or even imagined future world orders that could eliminate war. Among them were members of the peace churches and other religious groups, women, pacifists, radicals, labor activists, and other dissenters. Intolerance and repression often muted the voices of these war critics. Almost overnight, the individuals and groups who opposed the war faced constraints on their freedom to advocate, organize, and protest from the government, the press, and war supporters. Peace advocates, antiwar activists, and conscientious objectors also confronted internal disagreements over how to respond to the war and advance the cause of peace. Yet, those who opposed World War I helped initiate modern peace movements and left a legacy that continues to influence antiwar activism.

This interdisciplinary conference, hosted by the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, will explore the experiences of those who were in any way critical of the Great War, sometimes at great cost. We welcome paper, panel, poster, roundtable, and workshop proposals that engage in diverse ways with issues of conscience, dissent, resistance, and civil liberties during World War I in the United States and around the world. We encourage proposals that examine historical and contemporary parallels to the war. Strong conference papers will be given consideration for publication in special issues of the journals Mennonite Quarterly Review and Peace & Change.

Topics might include:

War Resistance as an Expression of Religious Conscience
Secular Dissent and Resistance to War (feminists, socialists, and other movements and communities)
The Costs of War: economic, political, social, physical, psychological, etc.
Civil Liberties in World War I and War Today
Race and Empire in World War I
The Legacy and Relevance of World War I Peace Activism to the Present
The Causes and Prevention of War: World War I and Since
Teaching World War I and Peace History in High School and College
Memory, Memorialization, and the Public History of World War I

The program committee invites interested participants to send a 1-page proposal focused on the theme of the conference by January 31, 2017 to John D. Roth (johndr@goshen.edu).

Warwick History of Violence Network Workshop

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Friday 13 May 2016, S0.19 Social Sciences Building, University of Warwick

Network Coordinators:
Jonathan Davies · Christopher Read

The history of violence has been the subject of extensive research. The Warwick History of Violence Network provides a focus for all areas of research into personal, social, political, and cultural violence. This includes but is not limited to interpersonal violence comprising lethal violence (murder and manslaughter), non-lethal violence (assault and rape), and consensual violence; collective violence (carnival, charivari, and massacres); individual and group political violence (riots, strikes, terrorism and revolution); and state violence against the individual (execution, punishment, terror). The Network also investigates cultural polemics and violence. In addition, it ignores the traditional differentiation of war from violence.

The Network is strongly interdisciplinary, drawing on anthropological, economic, emotional, environmental, gender, geographical, historical, legal, medical, philosophical, political, psychological, rhetorical, sociological, spatial, and visual approaches. The Network ranges from the late Middle Ages to the present and reaches across the globe with members working on Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

10-30 Reception and Coffee

11-00 – 11.30 Richard Bessel (York) Keynote introduction: Violence: A Modern Obsession

11.30 – 1-00 Revolutionary Violence: Theory and Practice
Steve Smith (All Souls) Revolutionary violence
Philippe le Goff (Kingston) Auguste Blanqui and the question of violence
Alistair Dickins (Manchester) Rewriting a Violent Script? The Fear of Popular Unrest in the Russian Revolution, 1917

1-00 – 1-45 Lunch Break

1-45 – 3-30 War, Race, Drugs and Violence
Pierre Purseigle (Warwick) War, violence, and solidarity. The urban experience of the First World War
Ben Smith (Warwick) Mexican cartels and the Drugs Wars
Michael Fleming (Warwick) Narrating anti-Semitic violence to the British governing class: The Weekly Political Intelligence Summary and the Holocaust.
Brendan McGeever (Birkbeck) Why was anti-Semitic violence such a problem within the revolutionary left specifically in Ukraine/western Russia in 1918 and 1919?

3-30 – 4-00 Break

4-00 – 4-30 Summary of the Day – Future Plans
The Convenors

Download programme here: Warwick History of Violence Network Workshop Programme

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Getting to Warwick: By car – There are a number of car parks on campus. For Social Sciences Car Parks 8, 10 and 15 are within five minutes walk. (Pay and Display – £3 for full day). Postcode for satnav: CV4 7AL
By Train: Coventry Station then taxi or bus no 12X, 11 and 11U from station forecourt –to the campus (30 mins approx)
Full details on University website: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/about/visiting/directions/

THERE IS NO FEE BUT WOULD ANYONE OTHER THAN SPEAKERS PLANNING TO ATTEND PLEASE CONTACT ONE OF THE CONVENORS SO WE CAN ESTIMATE CATERING REQUIREMENTS ETC.

Conference report: The Great War in the Middle East 1911-1923, 20-21 April 2016

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A major international conference, entitled ‘The Great War in the Middle East 1911-1923’ organised jointly by the War Studies Department of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the Changing Character of War Programme at the University of Oxford, took place on 20-21 April 2016. It re-examined the origins, conduct and consequences of the First World War in the Middle East. This conference brought together historians of the Middle East and the First World War to discuss this formative event and to relate the Great War to the broader period of conflict that affected the Ottoman Empire from 1911 to 1923.

A report on the conference by Dr Rob Johnson is available here: ME Great War Conference Report