Dr. Saskia Hin, from the University of Leuven will present on ‘Marriage in crisis: WWI and behavioural change in Belgium.’
Seminar Series: “Historical Demography – A Place in Modern Demography?”
Oxford Institute of Population Ageing
Seminar Room, 66 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PR
Thursday, 4th June 2015 at 2.00pm
Convenor: Dr George Leeson
All are welcome to attend this seminar
Violence, it seems, is on everyone’s mind. It constantly is in the news; it has given rise to an enormous historical, sociological, and philosophical literature; it occupies a prominent place in popular entertainment; and it is regarded as one of the fundamental problems affecting social, political and interpersonal relations. After a century that has been described as the most violent in the history of humanity, Professor Richard Bessel has written a new history of our violent world and how we have become obsessed about violence. He critiques the great themes of modern history from revolutionary upheavals around the globe, to the two world wars and the murder of the European Jews, to the great purges and, more recently, terrorism. Bessel sheds light on this phenomenon and how our sensitivity towards violence has grown and has affected the ways in which we understand the world around us – in terms of religious faith, politics, military confrontation, the role of the state, as well as of interpersonal and intimate relations. He critiques our modern day relationship with violence and how despite its continuing and inevitable nature, we have become more committed to limiting and suppressing it. Both historically questioning and intensely evocative of the most vicious and brutal violence enacted by mankind, this book shows how the place of violence in the modern world presents a number of paradoxes and how it is an inescapable theme in human history.
Richard Bessel is Professor of Twentieth Century History at the University of York. He works on the social and political history of modern Germany, the aftermath of the two world wars and the history of policing. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of German History and History Today. His books include Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism, Germany after the First World War and Nazism and War.
Chair: Patricia Clavin (Jesus College)
Panelists: Jane Caplan (St Antony’s), Paul Betts (St Antony’s), Nick Stargardt (Magdalen)
Venue: European Studies Centre, St Antony’s College, 70 Woodstock Road
Discounted copies from Simon & Schuster will be available
* Please let Paul Betts (paul.betts@sant.ox.ac.uk) know if you plan to attend, so that they can arrange refreshments.
On 25 April 1915, the Allied force launched amphibious landings on the Gallipoli Peninsular. The aim was to control the straits and capture Constantinople (now Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The Allied landings, which included French, Australian and New Zealand troops, were heavily opposed by Turkish forces and a trench warfare stalemate followed in extreme heat and appalling conditions. This eventually ended in a disastrous Allied defeat with over 250,000 casualties, including 58,000 dead. Turkish losses were heavier still.
These seven war memorials, are notable among the tens of thousands in every village, town and city in the country for their association with the Gallipoli campaign. Like all war memorials, they are tangible and poignant reminders of events a century ago.
For more information, see here.
Oxford Centre for Global History Special Lecture
‘British culture goes global: the cultural dimensions of imperial globalisation’
Professor John MacKenzie (Emeritus, University of Lancaster)
Wednesday 6th May, 5pm
Venue: Examination Schools
No one thinks twice about approaching the histories of, say, the Roman or Norman empires by using their material remains as evidence. Moreover, most such histories consider these empires from the point of view of the cultural influence exerted by them. Yet historians have been reluctant to deal with the British Empire as a cultural phenomenon. Many political, administrative, military, and economic histories have been published and these approaches are of course important. But it is now time to move beyond the political economy of empire in the direction of the cultural economy. This lecture will offer a prospectus for such a history, setting out to synthesise much detailed and focused work of the past twenty years or so. Its conclusion will be that the cultural dimensions are important not only for the full understanding of the nature and significance of the British Empire, but also for comprehending aspects of globalisation created by the past centuries of European cultural, and specifically British, influence.
All welcome.
Enquiries and to register: global@history.ox.ac.uk
The British Commission for Military History invites proposals for its annual summer conference on the theme of ‘culture clash’. The conference will be held at the Old Fire Station, Oxford on 11 July 2015. We will be looking at how different cultural understandings of war shaped the conduct of tactics, strategy and operations in a historical context. We welcome papers on any aspect of any conflict in which two or more different cultures came into contact, and where their cultural differences and similarities shaped the conduct of the war. This includes assumptions of superiority or inferiority, differing strategic goals and operational methodology (societies preferring either raiding or persisting strategies, for example), differing concepts of justness and proportionality in war or any other area of warfare that can be shaped by cultural practices and assumptions.
If you would like to present a paper, please send a short proposal (one or two paragraphs) to the conference organiser Jonathan Krause by 22 May 2015.
How to write the Great War? Francophone and Anglophone Poetics
This international conference will take place from 1st-2nd May 2015, at Magdalen College / Maison Française d’Oxford.
Download the conference programme: WWI.Affiche programme internet (rev)
Register here.
Trinity Term 2015 Seminar Series: Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine
Seminar Room, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PE
The following seminars will be held at on Mondays at 2.15pm
Coffee will be available from 2.00pm
‘Medicine and Modern Warfare’, Convener: Dr Roderick Bailey
Week 1 – 27 April
Ben Shephard, Bristol
‘Culture, politics or biology? How does American PTSD relate to European war trauma?’
Week 2 – 4 May
Bank Holiday – No Seminar
Week 3 – 11 May
Emily Mayhew, Imperial College London and Daffyd Edwards, Centre for Blast Injury Studies, Imperial College London
‘From the Western Front to Field Hospital Camp Bastion: How the foundations of military medicine in the 21st Century were laid in the Great War’
Week 4 – 18 May
Roderick Bailey, University of Oxford
‘Permanent make-up: Body modification and wartime disguise, 1939-45’
Week 5 – 25 May
Bank Holiday – No Seminar
Week 6 – 1 June
Ulf Schmidt, University of Kent
‘Secret science: A century of poison warfare and human experiments’
Week 7 – 8 June
Hazel Croft, Birkbeck, University of London
‘“It would frighten you to see the people sent to this place”: Why did the emotional and nervous states of women factory workers provoke such concern in Britain in the Second World War?’
Week 8 – 15 June
Sam Alberti, Royal College of Surgeons, London
‘Drawing bodies: British medical art in the early-twentieth century’