The Center for Civil War Research and the Department of History at the University of Mississippi seek papers for a conference to be held October 1-3, 2015 at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS. This conference will be hosted in conjunction with WAR-Net, and it will be the first conference WAR-Net has sponsored outside of the UK.
The conference uses the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the U. S. Civil War, the 100th anniversary of the First World War, and 75th anniversary of the Blitz as an opportunity to bring together scholars of gender, memory, and war on both sides of the Atlantic. The conference will broadly consider these themes in the United States, the British Isles, and the former British Empire during each of these conflicts as well as in their aftermath. The organizers encourage submissions from a wide range of disciplines that address the cultural, economic, military, political, social and literary dimensions of these subjects. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: the memory of emancipation and the end of slavery; memorialization of the military and civilian experiences of war; the role of gender in constructing postwar nationalism and patriotism; wartime literary and cinematic constructions of gender; photography/visual representation and memory; the cultural legacies of internal dissent and anti-war activism; gender and questions of wartime and postwar health (including mental well-being), medicine, injury and mortality; gender, religion and morality in the aftermath of war; the impact during and after the war of refugees and displaced persons; the trope of war as a catalyst for sexual expression or repression; representing wartime in postwar culture and media; gendered commemorations of civil and military leadership as well as of ordinary participants at local, regional, and national levels.
Confirmed keynote speakers include: Professor Susan-Mary Grant of Newcastle University (UK), author of The War for a Nation: the American Civil War; Professor Michael Roper of the University of Essex (UK), author of The Secret Battle: Emotional Survival in the Great War; Professor Kimberly Jensen of Western Oregon University, author of Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War; Professor Leisa Meyer of the College of William and Mary , author of Creating G.I. Jane: Sexuality and Power in the Women’s Army Corps During World War II and Professor Gill Plain of St Andrews University (UK), author of Women’s Fiction of the Second World War: Gender, Power and Resistance.
The conference encourages submissions from scholars at all career stages, including graduate students. To submit a proposal, send a brief CV and a 600-word abstract to civilwar@olemiss.edu no later than June 15, 2015.
Questions should also be directed to civilwar@olemiss.edu. For more information about the conference and the Center for Civil War Research, visit http://www.civilwarcenter.olemiss.edu/conference2015.html.
For more information about WAR-Net, visit: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/warnet/.