Lyon 2001

Call for Papers

The re-kindling of annual commemorations of the First World War in particular, and the upsurge in memorialisation in general, are demonstrative of renewed interest in 1914-18. This renewal is mirrored in the vitality of academic activity in this area. This is illustrated both by the large increase in publications, and by shifts in methodology and areas of study. Indeed, the French historian, Pierre Nora, has suggested that the Great War has undergone the kind of reappraisal applied to the French Revolution a decade ago.

Nowhere have these shifts been better illustrated than in the Historial de la Grande Guerre at Péronne in France. It epitomises what could be dubbed the second upheaval of the Great War: the academic upheaval which has meant that isolated study of the military, cultural, social or economic facets of the war is no longer possible.

Amidst such reappraisals, how are the newest scholars responding? This conference aims to bring together an international group of young scholars – postgraduate and postdoctoral – who work on the Great War in order to assess the influence of these historiographical shifts upon our work, to foster international collaboration and comparative history, to share our preliminary or more polished findings, and to scrutinise our works in progress in a broader context.
This conference, to be held in Lyon on the 7th and 8th September 2001, will address the following themes in four consecutive sessions:

1) Waging war:
To what extent have cultural and military historians truly colonized each other’s areas as the epigraph to the Cambridge University Press series “Studies in the social and cultural history of modern warfare” suggests? Can the social history of war be studied without a thorough engagement with events at the front or vice versa? Does Niall Ferguson’s Pity of War point to an original and proper way to combine military, economic, diplomatic, political and cultural history?

2) Communities at war:
From the individual to the state, how did the different levels of social organisation deal with the conflict and its consequences? What kind of solidarities, discriminations or mobilisation processes were at work in 1914-18? What relationship was established between military and civilian needs? Can new light be shed in this way upon the economy and political life of the belligerent societies?

3) The First World War and the intimate:
The “totalizing logic” of the Great War meant that it pervaded the most intimate spheres of the belligerent societies. How did the conflict impinge on sexual morality and gender relationships, on individuals and on families?
From shellshock to home front anxieties and the mourning process, how was the variegated suffering faced? How did contemporary medical science and practices cope with the war?

4) Intellectual responses to the war:
What kind of artistic, literary & scholarly responses did the war provoke? Where did the dividing line run through these different responses? What should be deemed as paramount: degree and qualities of participation in the war effort, nationality, or intellectual generation?

We welcome proposals germane to any of these topics as well as related to any geographical areas affected by the First World War.

The official languages of the conference will be English and French.

Abstracts of no more than 350 words and a short CV should be submitted by 11 January, 2001.

Held at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Lyon, 7 & 8 September 2001.