Conference: The First World War and Popular Culture

March 31st- April 2nd 2006, University of Newcastle, UK
Organisers: Stacy Gillis and Jessica Meyer

J.M. Winter, in The Great War and British People (1985), claimed that no study
of the First World War would be complete that failed to take into account the
literary legacy of the war. This legacy, particularly the works of the soldier
poets, has shaped the memory of the war over the past nine decades. In recent
years, academic discussion of the literary culture of the First World War has
expanded to include not only such poets and novelists writing during the war,
but also other more popular cultural forms created both during the war and in
the years since. From trench journals to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, from
Dorothy L. Sayers to Blackadder, from Sebastian Faulks to Aces High, Anglophone
culture has responded to the war in a variety of ways which have become sources
for both historians and cultural critics interested in the study of the war and
its aftermath.

This conference will bring together scholars working on all aspects of the
popular culture of the First World War to investigate both the ways in which
the war shaped popular culture and the ways in which the memory of war was
shaped in turn. We are particularly interested in providing an
interdisciplinary forum for cultural historians and literary and film scholars.
These disciplines have created substantial bodies of knowledge on the subject
of popular culture and the war, often approaching the subject from very
different perspectives. Bringing these and other disciplines together will
allow for a transdisciplinary debate on the role and meaning of popular culture
in our understandings of the First World War and its afterlife in our cultural
imagination.

Keynote Speakers
Margaret Higonnet (Connecticut)
Angela Smith (Plymouth)
Trudi Tate (Cambridge)
Jay Winter (Yale)

Potential subjects for discussion include, but are by no means limited to:
* Histories of reception
* Visual cultures
* Cultural responses to the war
* Depicting race and gender
* Literary publishing
* The war on television
* Politics of popular culture
* Genre fiction
* Children's cultural forms
* Satire and irony
* Epic film
* War as crisis of modernity
* The persistence of myth
* Representing the trench
* Uses of the 'Tommy'
* Violence, war and games
* The documentary
* Memorialisation
* Paul Fussell
* Pedagogy and war poetry
* Forgotten aspects of the war
* The Web and the war
* The homefront
* Museology

Abstract Deadline: Sept 15th, 2005

We welcome proposals for both panels and individual papers. Abstracts should
be no more than 300 words. Please ensure that a title, your name, affiliation
and email address are included with your abstract. Several publications will
emerge from the conference – please indicate on your abstract if you wish your
paper to be considered for inclusion.

We prefer to receive abstracts by email to the conference email account:
fwwconf_at_ncl.ac.uk. Please use this email account for enquiries.

Hard copies of abstracts can also be sent to: Dr Stacy Gillis, School of
English, Percy Building, University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU,
UK

-- ========================================================== From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List CFP_at_english.upenn.edu Full Information at http://cfp.english.upenn.edu or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu ==========================================================Received on Sun May 08 2005 - 09:15:50 EDT