CfP: ISFWWS: Recording, Narrating and Archiving the First World War, Melbourne July 2018

Posted on by

Monday, 9 July 2018 to Wednesday, 11 July 2018
Deakin Downtown, 2 Collins Square, 727 Collins Street, Melbourne

Following the success of the Oxford conference in November 2016, we are delighted to announce that the 10th conference of the International Society for First World War Studies will be held in Melbourne, Australia – our first to be held in the southern hemisphere!

We are thrilled that Professor Joan Beaumont of the Australian National University, and Professor Michael Roper of the University of Essex will be keynote speakers.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The ways in which contemporaries recorded the First World War have inevitably shaped the kinds of histories we have produced over the last century. The war was being recorded and archived as it happened – and for decades after – for particular reasons and particular purposes. The processes of recording and archiving have bequeathed in different times and places alternately a very rich, very partial, and very prejudiced record of conflict and its legacies.

This conference revisits the creation, recreation and transmission of knowledge about the war, especially in comparative and transnational frames. It encourages analysis of media presentations of the war during and after the fighting, the place of official and unofficial historians, networks of private knowledge, the development of oral histories, the work of family historians, collectors, archivists, curators and librarians, in order to understand how the war has been reconceptualised over time, and how the records of war facilitate or inhibit new perspectives.

Potential themes for conference panels and presentations are:

o Production, preservation and transmission of the records of war over time
o Archives, museums and the shaping of a record of war
o Military analyses and uses of the First World War
o Press, propaganda and the record of war
o Official and unofficial representations of war
o Family history and intergenerational transmission of the war
o Creating and accessing knowledge of war in a digital era
o Recording and archiving the centenary
o Fiction, film and popular consumption of the war

Submission Guidelines

Presenters will deliver twenty-minute papers followed by discussion. Proposals should be approximately 300 words in length. Applications should also be accompanied by a short biography. Panel proposals are welcome.

The working language of the conference and all submissions is English. The organisers intend to publish an edited collection from selected presentations.

Submission Email Address: fwws2018@deakin.edu.au
Closing Date for Submissions: 30 September 2017
Further information here.
Download call for papers: CFP Final

RAF Museum Academic Prizes

Posted on by

For the second year running the RAF Museum is sponsoring a series of academic prizes to reward high-quality research in the field of air power studies broadly defined. The prizes consist of an award for the best undergraduate and Masters prize respectively and a bursary to support a PhD candidate in the final year of their studies. For the purpose of each prize, ‘air power studies’ is to be understood in its broadest sense, encompassing not only the history of air warfare broadly defined, but also related fields such as archaeology, international relations, strategic studies, law and ethics, and museology. The prizes are not confined to works focused on the RAF but includes those which help tell the Service’s story. Details for each prize can be found in the descriptors below.

Applications are open from 1 July 2017 to 1 October 2017, and the museum will make a decision towards the end of the year. If you are interested in entering or know anyone who is eligible to enter, then please consider applying for the prize.

Descriptors:
The Royal Air Force Museum Undergraduate Prize in Air Power Studies
The Royal Air Force Museum Masters Prize in Air Power Studies
The Royal Air Force Museum PhD Bursary in Air Power Studies

IEG Research fellowships for international Ph.D. students

Posted on by

The Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) awards Research fellowships for international Ph.D. students for a research stay in Mainz beginning in March 2018.

The IEG awards fellowships for international junior researchers in history, theology and other historical subjects. The IEG promotes research on the historical foundations of Europe from the early modern period to 1989/90, particularly regarding their religious, political and social dimensions. Projects dealing with European communication and transfer processes as well as projects focusing on questions related to theology, church history and intellectual history are particularly welcome.

What we offer
Funding is currently €1,200/month. Research fellows live and work for between 6 and 12 months at the Institute in Mainz and can pursue their individual Ph.D. project. Fellows are advised by a mentor from among the IEG’s academic staff.

Requirements
PhD theses continue to be supervised and are completed under the auspices of the fellows’ home universities. Fellows are required to register officially as residents in Mainz and to reside and take part in events at the Institute. The linguae academicae at the IEG are German and English; fellows must have a passive command of both and an active command of at least one of the two languages so as to participate in the discussions at the Institute.

Please send your application via e-mail by 15 August 2017 to: fellowship@ieg-mainz.de
Subject: Stipendienbewerbung

For further information on the fellowship program and application see:
http://www.ieg-mainz.de/en/fellowships/application_details
http://www.ieg-mainz.de/media/public/PDF-Stipendien/Bewerbungsformular_Application%20Form_PhD.pdf

Contact:
Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) | Fellowship Programme | Barbara Müller, M. A.
Alte Universitaetsstraße 19 | 55116 Mainz – Germany | E-Mail: ieg3@ieg-mainz.de | Tel. 0049 (0)6131 – 39 39365

Event: Women and the army: 100 years of progress? National Army Museum, 24 June 2017

Posted on by

National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road, London, SW3 4HT
24 June 2017, 9.40am – 5.00pm

It’s 100 years since women were first allowed to perform roles within the British Army other than nursing. In light of this, we’re holding a conference to examine the evolution of women’s service in the military.

2017 is the ideal time for examining women’s involvement in the British military. It’s the 100th anniversary of women being able to enlist into non-nursing branches of the army. It’s also the 25th anniversary of the disbandment of the Women’s Royal Army Corps, which resulted in female soldiers being absorbed into the army as a whole. And just last year, women became eligible to serve in combat roles for the first time.

To mark these important milestones, the National Army Museum is holding a conference to review decades of debate around the role of women in the military, and to consider the roles they might perform in the future.

The conference will cover all aspects of women’s military service from 1917 to the present day, whether historical, operational, political, sociological or philosophical.

Conference programme here.
Further information and to book, see here.

Admission: £25.00
Concessions for students: £18.75
Ticket price includes lunch, tea and coffee. Any dietary requirements should be emailed to info@nam.ac.uk.

CfP: ‘Conscription and its Malcontents in the First World War’, St Peter’s College, Oxford, November 2017

Posted on by

St Peter’s College, Oxford
17 November 2017

Applications are invited for a conference exploring the public reaction to conscription during the First World War.

Papers relating to Ireland, the British Dominions, the French and Russian Empires and the Central Powers are invited, as well as those relating to the Suffrage and Pacifist movements.

Although papers are invited dealing with any aspect of the public reaction to conscription, a key theme will be the reaction among groups peripheral to the main belligerents, based on geography, politics, religion or ethnicity.

Applications from PhD students and Early Career Researchers are particularly welcome.

Submissions are welcome from all relevant disciplines, and inter-disciplinary discussion is very much encouraged.

Papers will be 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers.

Please send titles and abstracts (300-400 words) to Robin Adams by 15 August 2017
Email: conscription@history.ox.ac.uk

Download CfP: Call for Papers – ‘Conscription and its Malcontents in the First World War’

New books: ‘Turning Point 1917’ & ‘Le génocide des Arméniens’

Posted on by

Two new books have been published on the First World War.

Turning Point 1917. The British Empire at War
University of British Columbia Press, 2017.
Authors:
Douglas E. Delaney holds the Canada Research Chair in War Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada. He is the author of The Soldiers’ General: Bert Hoffmeister at War (2005), which won the 2007 C.P. Stacey Prize for Canadian Military History, and Corps Commanders: Five British and Canadian Generals at War, 1939-45 (2011). He is also co-editor (with Serge Marc Durflinger) of Capturing Hill 70: Canada’s Forgotten Battle of the First World War (2016).
Nikolas Gardner holds the Class of 1965 Chair in Leadership at the Royal Military College of Canada. He is the author of Trial by Fire: Command and the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 (2003) and The Siege of Kut-al-Amara: At War in Mesopotamia, 1915-1916 (2014).

Further information here.

For the British Empire and its allies of the Great War, 1917 was a year marked by one crisis after another. There was the overthrow of the Russian czar and the collapse of his massive armies, and the mutinies of the battered French army. There was also social and political upheaval on the home front, including labour unrest in Britain and opposition to conscription in Canada and Australia. But, here and there, glimmers of light pierced the gloom. Soldiers began solving the problems posed by trench warfare. The dominions, inspired by burgeoning nationalism, asserted themselves more in the councils of imperial power. And the United States finally entered the war.

Turning Point 1917 examines the British imperial war effort during the most pivotal and dynamic twelve months of the Great War. Written by internationally recognized historians from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, its chapters explore military, diplomatic, and domestic aspects of how the empire prosecuted the war. Their rich, nuanced analysis transcends narrow, national viewpoints of the conflict to examine the British Empire as a coalition rather than individual states engaged in their own distinctive struggles.

By drawing attention to the events that made 1917 a turning point, this book provides a unique perspective on the war. These events ultimately laid the groundwork for victory, strengthening the position of the British Empire relative to its enemies while, at the same time, forging arrangements to accommodate the increasingly divergent interests and identities of the dominions.

 

Le génocide des Arméniens : représentations, traces, mémoires
Sous la direction de : Joceline Chabot, Marie-Michèle Doucet, Sylvia Kasparian, Jean-François Thibault
Presses de l’Université Laval, 2017.

En 2015 avait lieu le 100 e anniversaire du génocide des Arméniens. Durant la Première Guerre mondiale, plus d’un million d’Arméniens ont été exterminés en raison d’une politique génocidaire instaurée et perpétrée par les autorités en place dans l’Empire ottoman. Aujourd’hui, ce drame est considéré comme l’un des premiers génocides du XX e siècle.

Ce livre, qui réunit des chercheurs nationaux et internationaux, explore les thèmes et les questions qui animent les recherches les plus récentes sur le génocide des Arméniens. Les chapitres qui composent cet ouvrage collectif sont regroupés autour de trois axes : représentations, traces et mémoires. En privilégiant une approche multidisciplinaire, il s’agit de rendre compte des dimensions multiples de cet objet d’étude et de mettre en relief les aspects structurants des débats actuels sur le génocide des Arméniens.

Further information here.

New publications: Literature & the Great War. Toby Garfitt, Oxford & Nicolas Bianchi, Montpellier

Posted on by

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature (STTCL) (http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/) is committed to publishing high quality, anonymously peer reviewed articles written in English on post-1900 literature in French, German, and Spanish. All issues are available online.

Recently published special issue: 41.2 (Summer 2017): Writing 1914-1918. National Responses to the Great War. “From the National Context to its Margins: When the World Used Literature to Respond to the Great War”.

Guest Editors: Toby Garfitt & Nicolas Bianchi

Articles on Canada and Argentina as well as France, Germany and Britain. Full table of contents available here.

By shedding light on some original responses to the Great War that are today hardly known, and by asking the same questions of many works written in contexts which were radically different, this STTCL special issue advocates for a genuinely comparative approach to this literature. Born in a context of nationalist withdrawal, these cultural objects also had a paradoxically wide circulation (due to early translations, commentaries, literary reactions, and so on), which is why study of these apparently isolated writers is so valuable.

 

Writing the Great War / Comment écrire la Grande Guerre?
Francophone and Anglophone Poetics / Poétiques francophones et anglophones
Edited by Nicolas Bianchi and Toby Garfitt

Series: Romanticism and after in France / Le Romantisme et après en France, Vol. 27
Series Editor: Patrick McGuinness

Peter Lang, Oxford, 2017. XIV, 366 pp.. ISBN: 978-1-78707-198-8 (print)
Available to purchase in ePDF and ePUB formats here.

For France the First World War, or Great War, was a war of national self-defence, but for Britain it was not. Does that mean that French literary treatments of this unimaginably destructive war were very different from British ones? Not necessarily – but much can be learned from considering both traditions side by side, something that is rarely done.

The essays collected in this bilingual volume, by a range of scholars working on literature and history on both sides of the Channel, show that while the wider purposes of the war are striking for their absence in both French and British traditions, there are many common strands: realistic narratives of the trenches, humour as a safety-valve, imagination and creativity. Yet there are differences, too: for instance, there is plenty of French poetry about the war, but no real equivalent of the British «war poets». The volume looks at iconic figures like Owen, Brooke, Barbusse, Apollinaire and Proust, but also at a number of lesser known writers, and includes a study of «poetry of colour», recognising the active contribution of some four million non-Europeans to the war effort. The book includes a preface by the eminent war historian Sir Hew Strachan.

Engagée dans une guerre défensive sur ses frontières, la France connut une Grande Guerre bien différente de celle avec laquelle composèrent ses alliés britanniques. Faut-il en conclure que les deux nations furent amenées à produire des réponses au conflit radicalement différentes? Peut-on dégager des traditions nationales ou des tendances transnationales ouvrant la voie à des comparaisons encore rarement esquissées par la critique littéraire? C’est le pari des contributions de ce volume bilingue, réunissant autour de la question: «comment écrire la Grande Guerre?», les articles de spécialistes francophones et anglophones des domaines historique et littéraire. Il montre la variété des thématiques partagées par les deux traditions littéraires: récits réalistes des tranchées, usage de l’humour comme d’un exutoire salutaire, imagination et créativité; et souligne la présence de différences notables, comme l’absence de mythification en France de la poésie de 14, pourtant elle-aussi produite en masse tout au long de la guerre. L’ouvrage, tout en donnant une place de choix aux écrivains de premier ordre (Owen, Brooke, Barbusse, Apollinaire ou Proust), tente d’offrir quelque visibilité à un certain nombre d’auteurs moins connus, au nombre desquels des auteurs de couleur, à qui leur contribution à l’effort de guerre n’aura pas valu la reconnaissance littéraire attendue. La préface a été rédigée par Sir Hew Strachan, grand spécialiste de l’histoire de la période.

Nicolas Bianchi is a normalien and agrégé de lettres modernes, teaching at Université Montpellier III.
Toby Garfitt is Fellow and Tutor in French at Magdalen College, Oxford.