Call for abstracts: Perspectives on the “Great” War / Rückblick auf den Ersten Weltkrieg

From: World War I Conference <[email protected]>

Perspectives on the “Great” W
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Perspectives on the “Great” War
Rückblick auf den Ersten Weltkrieg

Queen Mary, University of London
August 1.-4. 2014

Following an initial announcement and having found a considerable level of
interest, we are now able to provide
further information about this interdisciplinary conference.

We apologize for future multiple cross-postings. It is our intention to
host a major event which will stimulate and
support scholarship well into the future. We therefore aim to advertise
widely and repeatedly. The ideal objective
will be the formation of an international scholarly community with its own
digital presence and programme of events
to follow up what could be an initial gathering of colleagues with similar
interests.

The key-note speakers will be:
     - Professor Elza Adamowicz (London)
     - Professor Christopher Clark (Cambridge)
     - Professor Jonathan Steinberg (Pennsylvania)
     - Professor Sam Williamson (Sewanee History Project)

Broad Topics
Political and military history; colonial history; social and cultural
history; religious history; medical science and
technology; historiography; discourse analysis; legacy, memory and
21st-century cultural reflexes. Within these
areas, the following perspectives have presented themselves for debate:
    - the perspectives of Germany and Austria, Great Britain, the U.S.A,
Ireland, the Middle East and India, Australia
      and New Zealand, the African colonies of both Germany and Britain;
the Balkan, Polish and Russian perspectives
      and the Spanish, Italian and Portuguese perspectives
    - the Jewish perspective
    - confessional perspectives
    - the perspectives of occupied territories
    - gendered perspectives
    - the perspectives of artists, including Otto Dix, A.Y. Jackson
    - the perspectives of various authors, including Bertha von Suttner,
Alfred Döblin, Ernst Jünger, Robert Musil
    - the Nazi perspective

Within the above broad topics and perspectives, papers on the following
specific themes have been offered: British cinema,
tourism, advertising, art, literature, memory, occupation, resistance,
espionage and collaboration

We have received many offers to chair panels and will approach the generous
colleagues in due course.

Abstracts
Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words, including references. It will
be of great assistance to the organisers
if proposals are as concise as possible (i.e. fitting onto one sheet of A4
paper). The deadline for submission of
abstracts is 1st September 2012.

Conference Web-site
A conference web-site will be set up very shortly and we will send a link
to all those colleagues on our mailing
list. We also hope to organize an H-Net (or similar) presence very soon.


Funding and fees
Our university will be able to provide some funding, but cannot promise to
fund the entire event or pay speakers'
expenses. We may therefore have to charge a fee to cover our internal
expenses, but we will keep this as small as
possible. We will charge a reduced fee for students.

Once we have drawn up a provisional programme we will be able to apply for
additional funding from the usual
suspects. In the past we have received funding from the German Embassy, the
Austrian Cultural Forum and Queen Mary's
School of Languages, Linguistics and Film. Any further ideas as to whom we
may approach (or, indeed, generous offers
of support!) will be welcomed. At our last conference we were awarded a
grant just one week before the conference
took place and we were therefore able to pay for all meals, so there is
always hope that we will find generous
sponsors if we keep trying.

Publication
We cannot promise to publish all conference papers, but we intend at the
very least to produce one collection of
refereed articles. We have already received one promising offer, and we
will compare this with those from other
publishers over the following months.

Further desiderata
Someone to speak on digital resources; for more German and French
colleagues to hear about the event; offers of
collaboration from interested institutions,

Please continue to address all inquiries to
Prof. Felicity Rash
[email protected]

or
Dr Falco Pfalzgraf
[email protected]