Group for War and Cultural Studies

Aims of GWACS
Activities
Membership
Seminars and Conferences

Aims of GWACS

The Group for War and Culture Studies was established in 1995 at the University of Westminster to undertake and promote research into the relationships between war and culture in France and Francophone countries in the twentieth century. In 2001, the GWACS further developed its inter-disciplinary approach and extended its geographical coverage to include France’s main allies and adversaries throughout the twentieth century, while retaining its distinct emphasis on cultural history and cultural production as significant forces that have shaped the experience, representation and memory of war.

Key aspects of the Group's work are its focus on the forms and practices of cultural transmission in time of war, and the analysis of the impact of war on cultural identity and international cultural relations.

The GWACS collection of books and videos is housed at the University of Westminster.

From 2007 onwards the GWACS has capitalized on its fund of expertise by producing the Journal of War and Culture Studies, published three times a year by Intellect Publishers. The JWACS takes as its principal focus the relationship between war and culture in the 20th century, and into the 21st, primarily in Europe but not excluding other geographical areas involved in conflict and retaining a focus on their relationship to Europe.

One of the Group’s main aims is to foster inter-disciplinary work by specialists in cultural history, literary studies, and all forms of visual studies. Specialists in related aspects of social sciences and social and political history with a clear focus on cultural production are also welcome. The Group for War and Culture Studies and the Journal of War and Culture Studies seek to provide a forum for debate and the dissemination of knowledge amongst established scholars and specialists in the field, while encouraging the contributions of postgraduate students and younger colleagues. The GWACS is international in scope, with some 200 scholars from 14 countries around the world participating in its activities.

Activities

GWACS holds regular research seminars, an annual conference, and an on-going series of debates about educational issues relating to war and culture studies.

Founding Members of GWACS

The founding members of the Group for War and Culture Studies and their principal research interests in this field are as follows:

Hilary Footitt: The French Resistance (1940-1944) and the Liberation of France (1943-1945); French responses to the Spanish Civil War. She is currently researching women's political representation.

Valerie Holman, first GWACS Research Fellow: The history of art and book publication during the First and Second World Wars.

Marie-Monique Huss: The population debate in France; Perceptions of the family and the construction of national identity; History of Deportation.

Debra Kelly: Responses of the Parisian avant-garde to the First World War in the visual arts, poetry, the theatre, the novel and artistic and literary journals; the representation of the Second World War and its aftermath by French artists.

Alan Morrison: The exchanges and debates between the art and politics of the First and Second World Wars with special reference to English war writing.

Riccardo Steiner: Traumatisation (in literature, etc.) resulting from Jewish emigration and the Holocaust, particularly problems of identity; autobiography.

Ethel Tolansky: Resistance poetry; Literature of the Occupation and the Deportation; the concentration camp experience, Jean Cayrol in particular; the experience of the Algerian War in the novel and poetry.

GWACS Executive Committee

Professor Debra Kelly, University of Westminster

Professor Nicola Cooper, University of Swansea

Dr Martin Hurcombe, University of Bristol

GWACS Associated Researchers

Dr Valerie Holman, Associate Research Fellow

Dr Nicole Thatcher, Visiting Research Fellow

Dr Karine Chevalier, Visiting Research Fellow

Membership

If you are interested in finding out more about the activities of the GWACS with a view to becoming an associate member, participating in a seminar, workshop or conference, or contributing in any other way, please contact:

Dr. Debra Kelly, School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW U.K. Tel: (44) (0)20-7911-5000 extn. 2321 or  2307. Fax: (44) (0)20-7911-5870. Email: scotth@westminster.ac.uk or kellyd@westminster.ac.uk

We welcome postgraduate students as well as established scholars and specialists.

Seminar and Conference List

(All held at the University of Westminster unless otherwise stated)

15 February 1996 Inaugural Lecture. Professor Jay Winter, University of Cambridge: "The Cultural History of War: The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century", including a preview of the recent Channel 4 series.

13 June 1996 Research Seminar. Professor Catharine Brosman, University of Tulane, "A Narratological Model for War Narratives"; Dr Catherine O'Brien, Kingston University, "Submission, Subversion and Suffering in World War One"; Marie-Monique Huss, "Women without men: the representation of women during the First World War"; Dr Jo Reilly, Wiener Library, London, "Great Britain and Belsen: Representations of the Holocaust".

30 October 1996 Round Table, "Language and Metaphor in Readings and Representations of War" with Elza Adamowicz from Queen Mary and Westfield College London, Simon Featherstone from Anglia Polytechnic University, and Aribert Riemann, visiting scholar at Cambridge.

20 November 1996 Research Seminar, "The Transmission of Memory". Philippe Marlière, UCL, "Mémoire, socialisation et générations: La théorie de Maurice Halbwachs"; Dr Nancy Wood, School of European Studies, University of Sussex, "Pierre Nora et les lieux de mémoire"; Dr Tanis Hinchcliffe, School of Architecture & Engineering, University of Westminster, "Memories sustained and suppressed through the medium of architecture".

15 January 1997 Research Seminar, "Voices from the Depths - two French writers and their experiences in camps and prisons". Dr Nicole Thatcher, University of Middlesex, on Charlotte Delbo; Jennifer Ross, research student, University of Westminster, on Jean Cassou.

7 February 1997 First Annual Conference, "Myth and Propaganda in Wars of the Twentieth Century: France 1914-1964."Speakers:

  • Professor Annette Becker, Université de Lille III: "From one war to the next"
  • Dr Avner Ben Amos, Tel Aviv University & Visiting Fellow, NewCollege, Oxford: "The myth of the Marseillaise and the Great War: the transfer of Rouget de Lisle to the Invalides, 14th July 1915"
  • Dr Nikki Cooper, University of Sussex: "Heroes and martyrs: the changing mythical status of the French Army during the Indochinese War"
  • Dr Martyn Cornick, University of Birmingham: "Fighting myth with reality: the fall of France, Anglophobia and the BBC"
  • Dr Christian Delporte, Université François Rabelais, Tours: "The myth of the Fifth Column during the two World Wars"
  • Dr Philip Dine, University of Loughborough: "Imaging the war without a name: the French cinema and Algeria".
  • Dr Olivier Wieviorka, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud: "Between propaganda and 'telling the truth': choices, activities and effects of the clandestine press"

23 April 1997 Round Table, "Teaching About War" - What are the key issues in teaching about war? What is specific to studying war as a subject?  What educational outcomes are to be sought - e.g., can "empathy" be assessed? With participants from the Universities of Greenwich, Sussex, Westminster and the Open University, Roehampton Institute, City & Islington College, University College Hospital, and Medact.

4 June 1997 Research Seminar, "Writing and Survival". Dr David Killingray, Goldsmiths College, University of London, on Isaac Fadoyebo's "Stroke of Unbelievable Luck"; Ethel Tolansky, University of Westminster, on "Jean Cayrol - a voice from the camps".

10 December 1997 Research Seminar, "The Holocaust: the use and abuse of Memory". Dr Riccardo Steiner, GWACS founder member, University of Westminster.

13 February 1998 Second Annual conference: "Committing to Memory: Remembering and representing the experience of war in twentieth-century France". Speakers:

  • Professor Annette Becker, Université de Lille III: "Committing to Memory: Remembering and Representing";
  • Dr Leslie Davis, Dublin City University: "Re-writing the rules: L-F Céline's Great War metaphor";
  • Dr David Drake (Middlesex University): "Jean-Paul Sartre and Indo-China 1945-1954";
  • Melanie Garrett, University of Glasgow: "Remembering Gabriel Peri: religious cult as communist propaganda"
  • Dr Robert Gildea, Merton College, Oxford: "The Resistance Myth and Other Voices"; 
  • Claire Gorrara, University of Wales, Cardiff: "Meurtres pour mémoire: Remembering the Occupation in the detective fiction of Didier Daeninckx"
  • Professor Susan Greenfield, Lincoln College, Oxford; Gresham Professor of Physic: "Committing to Memory: the Human Brain";
  • Martin Hurcombe, Bristol University: "Representation of the Absurd: Legacy of the French combat novel of World War I";
  • Dr Angela Kimyongür, Hull University: "Louis Aragon. The representation of war: ideology and memory";
  • Dr Elise Noetinger (University of Cambridge): "L'Ecriture ou la vie: the price of silence";
  • Michael Peel (Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture): "Variations in Testimony: the stories of asylum-seekers";
  • Anny Dayan Rosenman, Université Paris VII:"Deuil, identité, écriture. Les traces de la Shoah dans la mémoire juive en France";
  • Marion Schmid, Edinburgh University: "'Antimémoires': the making of the war chapter in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu";
  • Jill Sturdee, Open University, Centre for Modern Languages: "Caen Children and the Final Solution: public and private memory";
  • Dr Nicole Thatcher (Middlesex University): "Mémoire et écriture: l'exemple de Charlotte Delbo".
  • Carine Trevisan, Université Paris VII: "The Bleeding Icon: sites of memory and mourning in the work of Claude Simon";
  • Dr Sarah Wilson, Courtauld Institute of Art: "Souviens-toi! War, cold war, aftermath: art across three generations, France and Germany 1945-95";
  • 25 March 1998 Round Table, "Teaching About War" - continuing from the previous Round Table session.
  • 20 May 1998  Research Seminar, "Memories of the Indochinese War in Film", Dr Nikki Cooper, University of Sussex.
  • 3 June 1998 Research Seminar, "Adventures in the Archives". Dr Valerie Holman on the archives of the Imperial War Museum Bute Collection and the French Institute, and Professor Alan Morrison on the University of Westminster's own archives which contain material notably of World War I.
  • 11 November 1998 Research Seminar, "11th November 1918 in France: visions of a nation rejoicing", Marie-Monique Huss, GWACS, on WWI postcards and film footage.
  • 25 November 1998 Research Seminar, "Life? or Theatre? The work of Charlotte Salomon". Monica Bohm-Duchen, art historian, freelance writer and co-curator of the Royal Academy exhibition about Charlotte Salomon, who died in Auschwitz in 1943.
  • 17 February 1999 Round Table, "Teaching about War", led by Professor Annette Becker, Université de Paris IV. Representations of war in the media; perceptions of war by different generations; and how the impact of one war can screen understanding of another.
  • 17 March 1999 Research Seminar, "A Model of Dramatic Treatments of War". Dr Susanne Greenhalgh, Lecturer in Drama, Roehampton Institute.
  • 12 May 1999 Work in Progress Seminar, "La Représentation de l'acte d'écrire pendant la guerre de 1914-1918". Marie-Monique Huss, University of Westminster, on visual representations of the act of writing by hand, and on the representation of handwritten messages.
  • 9 June 1999 Research Seminar, "The Algerian War in Image and Performance". Claire Addison, M.A., Courtauld Institute, on the Grand Tableau Anti-Fasciste Collectif, created in 1961 by Enrico Baj, Roberto Crippa, Gianni Dova, Erro (Ferró), Jean-Jacques Lebel, and Antonio Calcati.

17 September 1999 Third Annual Conference: "Jean Cayrol", at the Institut Francais de Londres.  Speakers:

  • Jean-Luc Alpigiano: "Jean Cayrol, Cinéaste. Les courts métrages"; 
  • Professor Bernard Baritaud, Centre Internationale d'Etudes Francophones, Paris: "Cayrol et l'humanisme chrétien des années 50"; 
  • Professor Albert Mingelgrün, Université Libre de Bruxelles: "Alerte aux ombres: une poésie concentrationnaire"; 
  • Dr Andy Stafford, University of Lancaster: "Poetry after Auschwitz? Cayrol and the concentrationate aesthetic"; 
  • Ethel Tolansky, GWACS, University of Westminster: "Survival: Cayrol's correspondence with Jean Ballard and Albert Béguin"; 
  • Bertrand Visage, Editions du Seuil: "Jean Cayrol et une génération de jeunes écrivains". 
18 November 1999 Research Seminar, "Out of the Mouths of Children: using the testimony of the children of 1944 in reconstructing the battle of Montélimar". Philippe Planel, freelance researcher and teacher, on a particular case-study and wider issues in the use of children's testimonies.

4 February 2000  Fourth Annual Conference: "Legacies of War: Mourning and Beyond". Speakers:

  • Professor Michael Alpert, University of Westminster: "Spain confronts its war history";
  • Dr Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, "L'exceptionnel normal: le cas de la famille Gallé"; 
  • Dr Hugo Frey, University College Chichester: "A Refusal to mourn: allusions and veiled references to the French extreme right-wing in the Nouvelle Vague";
  • Angela Gaffney, Cardiff National Museum: "Women, war and remembrance";
  • Keith Grieves, Kingston University: "Rural parish churches and the bereaved after 1918";
  • Gerd Hankel, "Libération ou défaite: le souvenir de la seconde guerre mondiale en Allemagne"; 
  • Dr Sue Malvern, University of Reading: "Women, war memorials and the cult of Edith Cavell";
  • Eric Robertson, Royal Holloway, London: "Blaise Cendrars and the cinema of war";
  • Pnina Rosenberg, Ghetto Fighter's House Israel: "Visual art in French internment camps during the second world war".
  • Janina Struk, "Photographs and the Holocaust: problems of interpretation";
  • Dr Peter Tame, Queen's University of Belfast: "Au bon beurre: satire as national therapy";
  • Professor Jay Winter, University of Cambridge: "Topoi and Experience: Social agency, mourning and the aftermath of war";

28 March 2000 "Performing War: Theatricality on the Western Front, 1914-1918", Annabelle Melzer, Dartmouth College, U.S.

9 May 2000 "Occupying the Imagination: Fairy Stories and Propaganda in Vichy France", Dr Judith Proud, University of Plymouth.

25 October 2000 "The Algerian War: between memory and history". In conjunction with the University of Westminster Francophone Africa, Caribbean & Pacific Research Group. Dr Philip Dine, University of Loughborough.

22 November 2000 "Nightmare and Fog: the use and abuse of history and the cultural impasse in Algeria". In conjunction with the University of Westminster Francophone Africa, Caribbean & Pacific Research Group. Dr Hugh Roberts, LSE, The Algerian Society.

7 February 2001 "L'Afrique du Nord dans la guerre 1939-1945". In conjunction with the University of Westminster Francophone Africa, Caribbean & Pacific Research Group. Dr Christine Levisse-Touzé, Director of the Mémorial Leclerc Musée Jean Moulin, Paris.

7 March 2001 Round Table on "War and Culture in Tunisia". Participants included Dr Catharine Brosman of Tulane University, USA, and Hélène Gill, University of Westminster.

4 April 2001 Research Seminar on Visual Culture: War in North Africa. Speakers were Hélène Gill of the University of Westminster, on "Ambiguous Images and Conflictual Identities": colonial paintings of Algeria, 100 years on"; and Fran Lloyd, Head of the School of Art and Design History at Kingston University, on "Women Artists in North Africa".

25 May 2001 Fifth Annual Conference: "Humour as a Strategy in War". Speakers:

  • Andrew Robertshaw, National Army Museum London : "'Irrepressible Chirpy Cockney Chappies?' Humour as an aid to survival".
  • Pierre Purseigle, Université de Toulouse: "Mirroring societies at war : pictorial humour in the British and French popular press during the Great War" 
  • Dr Jean-Yves Le Naour, Université de Toulouse: « Du rire et des larmes: nécessité et culpabilité du rire dans la France en guerre »
  • Tony O'Brien, University of Hull: "'Laugh? I nearly died'. A comparative study of humour and ideology in Gaspard and Le Feu"
  • Mark Bryant: "Crusader, White Rabbit, or Organ-Grinder's Monkey? Leslie Illingworth and the British Political Cartoon in World War Two" 
  • Dr Chris Lloyd, University of Durham: "Comic Songs in the Occupation"
  • Professor Christie Davies, University of Reading: on "Humour as a non-strategy in war"
  • Dr Corinna Peniston-Bird, University of Lancaster & Professor Penny Summerfield, University of Manchester: "'Hey, you're dead!': The multiple uses of humour in representations of British national defence in the Second World War"

31 October 2001 Dr George Bailey O.B.E., from the University of Westminster Business School, on "Using Modern Management Techniques to Reassess British Military Performance in France, 1914-1918".

14 November 2001 Paddy Scannell, Professor of Broadcasting History, Director of the Graduate Centre and Head of Research in the School of Communication and Creative Industries at the University of Westminster, on "Workers' Playtime: the BBC, the Working Class and the Second World War".

20 February 2002 Helena Scott on "Pius the Twelfth: the real silence".

1 March 2002 Together with the University of Westminster Centre for the Study of Democracy, a one-day symposium on "Violence and Language". Speakers: Professor John Keane of the CSD; Professor Jean Seaton, School of Communication and Creative Industries, University of Westminster; Tom Paulin, Hertford College, Oxford. 

20 April 2002 6th Annual Conference "War and Visual Culture in 20th-Century Europe" Speakers: 

  • Helen Beale, University of Stirling: 'The Language of Resistance Sculpture'
  • Monica Bohm-Duchen, freelance writer and curator: 'Nazi War Art Reassessed' 
  • Charles Chadwyck-Healey, publisher: 'The Photographic Book Records World War II' 
  • Hilary Footitt, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Stirling / Chair of the University Council for Modern Languages: 'Visual Ethnographies: Photo as Anecdote' 
  • Paul Gough, University of the West of England: 'Artistic Records: the Regimental Artist, Historical Narrative and Hidden Commemoration' 
  • Bill Kidd, University of Stirling: 'Memorial Iconography and Renoir's La Grande Illusion' 
  • Gabriel Koureas, Birkbeck College London: 'Trauma and Masculinity in the Visual Culture of the 1920s' 
  • Jonathan Long, Durham University: 'World War and Cold War: Bertolt Brecht's Kriegsfibel' 
  • Pnina Rosenberg, Art Curator, Ghetto Fighter's House, Israel: 'Mickey Mouse in the French Internment Camp of Gurs

24 April 2002 GWACS Bristol held a one-day symposium on "The Figure of the Soldier". Speakers: 

  • Mike Basker, University of Bristol, "The Soldier, the Red Guardsman and the Unknown Warrior: converging images in Russian poetry 1914-1937"; 
  • Richard Bolster, University of Bristol, "Disenchantment at Waterloo: a Stendhalian hero goes to war"; 
  • Nikki Cooper, University of Bristol, "'Mon Légionnaire': hard men, heroes, heart-throbs"; 
  • Russel Cousins, University of Birmingham, "Narrative Fragmentation and Coherence in La Débâcle: Zola's multiplicity of viewpoint and the soldier's perspective"; 
  • John Gilmour, University of Bristol, "The Africanista Officer and the Forging of a Spanish National Identity"; 
  • Katharine Hodgson, University of Exeter, "Representations of the Victor in Soviet Russian poetry of 1945"; 
  • Josie McLellan, University of Bristol, "'A Hero can't be Frightened': constructing heroism in East German accounts of the International Brigades"; 
  • Catherine Merridale, University of Bristol, "The Red Army Soldier: an unrecoverable memory?";
  • Bill Niven, NottinghamTrentUniversity , "Through the Eye of the Camera: crime, politics and aesthetics in the Wehrmacht Exhibition"; 
  • Mikhail Ryklin, Moscow Academy of Sciences, "War in the Context of Terror".

8 and 9 November 2002 Conference in association with University College London and the National Portrait Gallery: War, Art and Medicine, accompanying the exhibition at UCL on Henry Tonks, surgeon and artist. Speakers:

  • Kate Adie, BBC Chief News Correspondent, “War through the Media”
  • Andrew Bamji, Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, “Henry Tonks and the Portraiture of Disfigurement: a Medical View”
  • Jonathan Black, University of Newcastle, “‘Pain with Stoicism’: Masculinity, Self-control and the Image of the Wounded British Soldier in the First World War Art of C.R.W. Nevinson, Eric Kennington and Charles Sargeant Jagger”
  • Emma Chambers, University College London, “Remaking Faces in Art and Surgery: Henry Tonks’ Plastic Surgery Pastels”
  • Sarah Crellin, Independent Art Historian, “Plastic Arts: Sculptors and Surgeons in the Great War”
  • Santanu Das, St. John’s College Cambridge, “‘Deep Into His Body’, Anatomy, Knowledge and Trauma in First World War Nurses’ Narratives”
  • Paul Gough, University of the West of England, Bristol, “The Importance of the Front-Line Orderly and Stretcher-Bearer in the Iconography of the Western Front”
  • Oliver Green, Head of Collections, London’s Transport Museum, “Down the Tube: Underground Art on the Home Front”
  • John Keane, Imperial War Museum's Official Recorder during the Gulf War, “Work and Experiences in the Gulf War”
  • Gabriel Koureas, Birkbeck College, “Shell Shock, Dreams and Facial Disfigurement - Censoring the Male Body”
  • Brian Morgan, Honorary Archivist, British Association of Plastic Surgeons, “New Techniques of Plastic Surgery”
  • Mike O’Mahony, University of Bristol, “The Agony and the Ecstasy: Two Conflicting Views of the Impact of Combat on the Soldier”

10-13 April 2003 “War, Community and Visual” session organised at the 2003 Association of Art Historians Conference Articulations.  Speakers:

  • Jonathan Blackwood, University of Glamorgan, “Local Defence Volunteer: The Painting and Criticism of Edward Baird, 1939-45”
  • Veronica Davies, University of East London, “From ‘Active Service’ to Collaboration: Reconstructing the German Art World in the British Zone”
  • Simon Dell, University of East Anglia, “The Apocalypse of Fraternity: The Spanish Civil War and the Image of the Popular Front in France”
  • Paul Gough, University of the West of England, “Creating Communities of Peace, Protest and Intervention”
  • Sharon Lowenna, Falmouth College of Arts, “‘Missing in Action’: the Newlyn School and the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902”
  • Chin-tao Wu, University College London and Nanhua University, Taiwan, “Missing Presumed dead: Absence and Remembrance in the Work of Doris Salcedo”

23 April 2003 One-day Symposium “Women and War”, organised by GWACS, The Institute for Advanced Studies and the Alumni Foundation at the University of Bristol. Speakers:

  • Santanu Das, St John’s College Cambridge, “‘Oh! I love the British Tommy!’: Service and intimacy in First World War Nurses’ Memoirs
  • Alison Fell, Queen’s College Oxford, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle: war and trauma in Colette’s Chéri and La Fin de Chéri”
  • Julie Gottlieb, University of Bristol, “Women and Foreign Policy in Inter-war Britain”
  • Martin Conway, (Balliol College Oxford, “The Victory of Womenism? The experience of Belgian Women during the Second World War”
  • Gareth Pritchard, Swansea University, “German Women in 1945”
  • Iselin Theien, Institute for Social Research Oslo and St Hilda’s College Oxford, “Back to normal? Women consumers in the aftermath of the Second World War in Norway”
  • Zoe Waxman, Mansfield College Oxford, “Gendering the Holocaust: the politics of representing women’s testimonies”

23 May 2003 Seventh Annual Conference “Nations and Narrations: War and Narrative in 20th-Century Europe”

Speakers:

  • Hervé Baudry, University of Coimbra, Portugal: “Gérald Hervé, romancier de la guerre et penseur de l’armée”
  • Stefanie Cadenhead, University of Liverpool: “Le retour au récit: un effort vers le sens. Contemporary French fictions, the Second World War and the Occupation”
  • John Flower, University of Kent at Canterbury: “Patrick Modiano and the return of totalitarianism”
  • Martin Hurcombe, University of Bristol / GWACS: “Exemplary Deaths: the French Detective Novel’s Treatment of the First World War”
  • Heather Jones, Trinity College Dublin: “Pat Barker and Sebastian Faulks: Re-Inventing the First World War Narrative”
  • Deirdre Kelliher, University College Dublin: “Narrating Violence: Theories of representation”
  • Nicholas Martin, University of St Andrews: “Rocking the Boat: Günter Grass’s Crabwalk and Postwar German Memory”
  • Clément Puget, Université Michel de Montaigne – Bordeaux 3: “Verdun, 1916. L’écriture de l’histoire dans les films de fiction et les manuels d’enseignement d’histoire au 20e siècle”
  • James Steel, Glasgow University: “Fascination-repulsion: the French and war”
  • Janet Streeter, St Martin’s College, Carlisle: “The Papon Trial as a narrative and its implications for cultural memory”
  • John Theobald, Southampton Institute: “Mass Media War Narratives and their Radical Critics”
  • Leon van Schoonneveldt, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam: “Experience and Expertise in the Representation of the Unrepresentable”

4 June 2003 Research Seminar, “‘Rhythmic History’: contemporary German-language poems of the First World War by Thomas Kling and Raoul Schrott” Karen Leeder, New College Oxford, and “The impact of the First World War as portrayed in the French regional novel (Ecole de Brive)”, William Dickson, University of Glasgow.

1 July 2003 Research Seminar, “Constructing a narrative of women and war: the Imperial War Museum and photographs”, Deborah Thom, Robinson College Cambridge; and “Theatre of War: the photographic works of Mo Bowman”, Catherine Davis, Birkbeck College London.

15 October 2003 Research Seminar, "Birth of a Legend: the Experiment of the Cahiers du Rhône during the Second World War", by Professor Francois Vallotton, University of Lausanne, GWACS Visiting Professor.

12 May 2004 Research Seminar, “The work of the artists who designed camouflage for the Civil Defence Camouflage Unit in Leamington Spa during the Second World War”, Alison Plumridge, Senior Curatorial Officer, Art Gallery and Museum, Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa.

16 June 2004 Research Seminar, “Towards an Embodied Sociology of War: past approaches, current issues, and future directions”, Shaun Bertram, Carleton University, Ottawa. A methodological introduction to the GWACS annual conference “The Body At War”.

25 and 26 June 2004 Eighth Annual Conference “The Body at War: Somatic Carto-graphies of Western Warfare in the 19th and 20th centuries”.

Organised in association with The Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the School for Journalism and Communications of Carleton University, Ottowa, Canada. Speakers:

  • Sylvie Allouche, Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne: “The Warrior Body in Science Fiction. A philosophical exploration of the possible”
  • Julie Anderson, University of Manchester: “Rehabilitation and Second World War Ex-Servicemen”
  • Trevor Brent, Goldsmiths College London: “Wyndham Lewis, World War One and the Collapse of the Masculine Performance”
  • Ana Carden-Coyne, University of Manchester: “Grateful Bodies: Rehabilitation, Resistance and Disabled American Veterans”
  • David Caruso, Cornell University: “Crossing Institutionalised Boundaries: Triage and the Use of Bodies in World War One”
  • Caroline Cawthorn, Linacre College Oxford: “‘Not Ashamed to Be a Man’: The Figure of the Soldier in the Thought of F.D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley”
  • Alison Fell, University of Lancaster: “The Male Body in French First World War Nurse Memoirs”
  • Wendy Gagen, University of Essex: “Discovering Impairment in the Great War: the case of J. B. Middlebrook”
  • Stacy Gillis, University of Exeter: “The Body in the Library: Mourning, World War One and Detective Fiction”
  • Paul Gough, UWE Bristol: “The Body Heroic: representations of event and historical exactitude in the work of the official regimental artist”
  • Catherine Guy-Murrell, University of Reading : « Le voile islamique entre guerre et paix : enjeu plastique et pari critique »
  • Margaret Higonnet, Harvard University: “Transgressive Female Bodies In World War One”
  • Paul Hodges, Birkbeck College London: “‘They don’t like it up ’em!’: Bayonet Fetishisation in the British Army in the First World War”
  • Charlotte Kearns, University of Leeds: “The Role and Purpose of the Soldier in the Poetry of A. E. Housman”
  • Gabriel Koureas, Birkbeck College, London: “Embodying (Post) Colonial Masculinities. The War of Independence from British Rule in Cyprus (1955-60) and the Construction of Gender and National Identities”
  • Esther MacCallum-Stewart, University of Sussex: “‘An Ecstasy of Fumbling’? Conceptualising the Male Body in First World War Prose”
  • Paloma McMullan, “Leaky Vessels and Moving Targets: The US Soldier’s Experience of Corporeal Frailty in Vietnam”
  • Maja Petrovic, Cambridge: “Human remains and national identity in wartime and postwar Serbia”
  • Andrew Shail, University of Exeter: “‘The Real Thing At Last’: the Body in Official British Film of the First World War”
  • Joseph A. Tighe, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh: “‘All Quiet on the Western Front’: A Phenomenological Investigation of War”
  • IsabelleVeyrat-Masson, Université Paris 4 – Sorbonne : « Des corps incongrus: les correspondantes de guerre à la télévision »
  • Colette Wilson, Royal Holloway, London: “The Commune is a Woman: the Female Body as Metaphor for Civil War”.

The conference also included “Reconstructions”, a video presentation by Dawn Pendergast around Hiroshima Mon Amour.

Wednesday 1st December 2004 Research Seminar, “Lost Fathers, Forgotten Army”, Emma Dodman, Christine McCauley and Jini Rawlings of the GRIN – Group for Research into Illustration and Narrativity at the University of Westminster, gave an informal, illustrated presentation on their current project on the War in Burma.

Wednesday 9 February 2005 "Camouflage and Schizophrenia: masquerade and crisis in the Arab-Israeli conflict", Ayelet Zohar, University College London. A screening of the documentary Undercover Dreams (Director: Yehudah Kaveh; Producer: Israeli Broadcasting Authority; Hebrew with English subtitles; Channel 1, 2003) followed by a short paper and discussion concerning the effects of 'masquerading' on soldiers in later life.

Tuesday 24th May 2005 Research Seminar, “A Matter of Life and Death: Soviet Political Posters in World War Two”, Elizabeth Waters, University of Westminster; and “Soviet Women at the Front in World War Two – myths and cultural stereotypes”, Linda Aldwinckle, University of Westminster.

14 and 15 Oct 2005 Ninth Annual Conference “Intellectuals and War from Verdun to Baghdad”

Speakers:

  • Annette Becker, Paris X Nanterre; Directrice du Centre Pierre Francastel “Memory Gaps: Maurice Halbwachs, Memory and the Great War”
  • Catharine Savage Brosman, Professor Emerita, Tulane University, New Orleans and Honorary Research Professor, University of Sheffield: “French Intellectuals Overseas 1940-1945 and the Questions of Vichy and Free France”
  • Christine Daigle, Brock University, Ontario: “Sartre and the Phoney War”
  • Jonathan Ervine, University of Leeds: “The Opposition to War in French Cinema 1954-67”
  • John Flower, Emeritus Professor, University of Kent at Canterbury: “An Armchair Dispute: François Mauriac and Jean-Louis Vaudoyer”
  • Richard Francis, University of Nottingham: “Romain Rolland and the Rejection of Pacifism”
  • Jean-Benoît Ghenne, Centre de Philosophie du Droit, Université Catholique de Louvain:”Bergson et la première guerre mondiale: habitudes et possibles sociaux”
  • Robin Lathangue, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario: “Theory and Engagement: Simone Weil on the Reconstruction of France”
  • Michel Leymarie, Université Charles-de-Gaulle Lille III: “Des intellectuels quadragénaires dans La Grande Guerre. L’exemple des frères Tharaud et d’Albert Thibaudet”
  • Roy MacLeod, Emeritus Professor, University of Sydney: “Science, Warfare and ‘Scientific Intellectuals’, 1914-1919”
  • Mark Orme, University of Central Lancashire: “From Despair to Resistance: Albert Camus’s Response to the Second World War”
  • Guillaume Piketty, Directeur de recherches, Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po, Paris: “Pierre Brossolette, from Pacifism to Resistance”
  • Clément Puget, Université Bordeaux 3; A.T.E.R. à l’Université Paris 7: “Léon Poirier, un regard sur Verdun”
  • Cynthia Wachtell, Stern College for Women, Yeshiva University, New York: “Four Lights: The Woman’s Peace Party of New York’s Response to World War I”
  • Stephen Woolsey, Houghton College, New York: “ ‘No Battlefield or Shattered Country so Ugly’: Willa Cather's One of Ours and American Ambivalence in the Great War”
  • Mikkel Zangenberg, Copenhagen University: “Just War? Iraq in the Bonfire between Walzer, Zizek, Negri and Hardt”
  • Round Table: Andrew Sola, University of Maryland University College-Europe; Anne-Marie Obajtek-Kirkwood, Drexel University, Philadelphia; and Matteo Stocchetti, Arcada Institute, Helsinki

Monday 14 November 2005, 6 – 8 p.m. Seminar: “Ordinary Springboks and the historiography of South Africa”. Dr. Neil Roos, of the University of Pretoria, talked about his book, recently published by Ashgate: Ordinary Springboks:  White Servicemen and Social Justice in South Africa, 1939-1961.

17 – 19 July 2006 Tenth Annual Conference “War without Limits: Spain 1936-1939 and Beyond” (University of Bristol)

Speakers:

  • Eugenia Afinoguénova (Marquette University in Madrid): ‘“Esto se llama Raza, hijo mío”: Differences Integrated, the Visualizations of the “New State”, and the Fascist Imaginary in Prisioneros de guerra and Raza.’
  • Michael Alpert (University of Westminster): ‘Franco’s Flight from the Canaries to Tetuán: Some Unasked Questions’
  • Christine Arkinstall (University of Aukland): ‘Re-membering the Spanish Civil War: History as Trauma and Wound in Ángela Figuera’s Poetic Work.’
  • Richard Baxell (IBMT): ‘The Spanish Legacy: Experiences of British members of the International Brigades during the Second World War’
  • Niall Binns (Universidad Complutense, Madrid): ‘The Spanish Civil War in Spanish American Poetry’
  • Charles Burdett (University of Bristol): ‘Italian Journalists and the Spanish Civil War’
  • Matthew Calihman (Missouri State University): ‘The Spanish Civil War and the Struggle for Cultural Democracy in the Historical Fiction of John A. Williams’
  • Mercedes Camino (University of Lancaster): ‘War, Women and Absence: The Spanish Civil War in Film’
  • Francie Cate-Arries (William and Mary College, USA): ‘Revealing the Forgotten Faces of Spain’s War: Ione Robinson and the Art of Bearing Witness, 1938-1939’
  • Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez (Trent University, Ontario) : ‘Red Terror, Blue Memoirs: The Civil War and the Politics of Victimhood in Early Franco’s Spain’
  • Paul Corthorn (University College, Oxford): ‘The British Left and the Spanish Civil War’
  • Laurent Desanti (Université Paris III): ‘Paysages en guerre et en revolution chez Jean-Richard Bloch, André Chamson et André Malraux’
  • Megan Echevarria (University of Rhode Island): ‘Memorialization Matters: How and Why Novelists Recall and Recount the War’
  • Kristin Ewins (St. Hilda’s, University of Oxford): ‘The Spanish Civil War in the Work of Sylvia Townsend Warner’
  • Kevin Foster (Monash University): ‘Land and Freedom: Evolution of a Screenplay’
  • Hugo Garcia (UNED, Madrid): ‘Political Tourism during the Spanish Civil War: The British Experience’
  • Silvia Gesser (Tel Aviv University): ‘What to Do with a Distressing Past: The Spanish Civil War in Commemorative Exhibitions and Catalogues’
  • Heather Graham (University of London Royal Holloway): ‘The Memory of Murder: Mass Killing, Incarceration and the Making of Francoism’
  • Martin Hurcombe (University of Bristol, GWACS): ‘Oh What a Lovelorn War: Romance and Ideology in the French Novel of the Spanish Civil War’
  • Alvaro Jaspe (University of Ulster): ‘ “It appears that innocent civilians are being killed without any justification”: The Forgotten Front, The War and Repression in Galicia, 1936. H M Consul Oxley’s Perspective’
  • Soline Jolliet (Université Paris IV): ‘La poésie engagée de Dionisio Ridruejo: un exemple du pouvoir symbolique de la littérature nationaliste’
  • Daniel Kowalsky (Queen’s University, Belfast): ‘The Soviet Cinematic Offensive in the Spanish Civil War’
  • Lisa Lines (Flinders University): ‘Milicianas: Republican Women in Combat during the Spanish Civil War’
  • Angel Llorente (Independent Researcher): ‘Fine Arts and the Spanish Civil War’
  • Roxana Nadim (Université Paris III): ‘Barcelone assiégée ou l’éclatement des limites dans Le Palace de Claude Simon’
  • Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela): ‘To die for the Fatherland, or: How nationalist was the Spanish Civil War? Some evidence concerning the “patriotic” motivation of combatants of the two sides’
  • Mike O’Mahony (University of Bristol): ‘Sketches of Spain?: The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Socialist Realism in the Soviet Union’
  • Daniel Palmieri (ICRC): ‘When Neutrality Meets Ideology: The International Committee of the Red Cross, Franco and the Victims (1936-1965)’
  • John Parkin (University of Bristol): ‘Laughter of the Left’
  • Jill Parsons (London School of Economics): ‘The Extent of Republican Repression in Madrid, 1936-1939’
  • Ignacio Perez-Ibañez (University of Rhode Island): ‘Women in Spain and the Anarcho-Feminist Movement during the Civil War’
  • Micahel Petrou (St Anthony’s, University of Oxford) : ‘Immigrant Army: Canadians in the Spanish Civil War’
  • Guillaume Piketty and Evelyn Mesquida (Sciences Politiques, Paris):  ‘From Spain to Berchtesgaden: History and Memory of The Nueve’.
  • Paul Preston (London School of Economics): ‘The War Crimes of General Franco’
  • Patricia Rae (Queen’s University, Ontario): ‘Spain and the Reversion to Modernism: Homage to Catalonia and the “War Books”’
  • Luc Rasson (University of Antwerp): ‘Michel del Castillo face à la guerre d’Espagne’
  • Raanan Rein (Tel Aviv University) : ‘Echoes of the Spanish Civil War in Palestine: Zionists, Communists and the Contemporary Press’
  • Mike Richards (University of the West of England): ‘The Spanish Civil War 70 years on: Public and Personal Memories of the War as Social History’
  • Julius Ruiz (University of Edinburgh): ‘Defending the Republic: the García Atadell Brigade in Madrid, 1936’
  • Pablo Sánchez León and Jesús Izquierdo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): ‘Distant Proximity: Anthropologies of the Spanish Civil War’
  • Rémi Skoutelsky (Université Paris IV – Sorbonne) : ‘L’Image de la guerre’
  • Eric Smith (University of Illinois at Chicago): ‘Democracy and Fascism in the American Mind: United Front Politics and the Spanish Civil War’.
  • Scott Soo (Université Toulouse I): ‘ “The End of Christ”: A Spanish Libertarian Co-operative in the Southwest of France, 1939-1940’
  • Gareth Stockey (University of Lancaster): ‘Traitors to England? Gibraltar and British Policy Towards the Spanish Civil War after August 1936’.
  • Rob Stradling (University of Wales, Cardiff) : ‘Fascists, Philistines – and Franco’
  • Peter Tame (Queen’s University, Belfast): ‘The Space that was Spain: Two French frères ennemis, Robert Brasillach and André Chamson, and their writings on the Spanish Civil War’
  • Colin Thomas ‘Filming the Brigaders - Homage or History?’, presentation followed by the premier of his film The Dragon’s Dearest Cause.
  • Reiner Tosstorf (Johannes-Gutenburg University, Mainz): ‘Case Closed: The Assassination of Andreu Nin, the Persecution of the POUM and its Background’
  • Aránzazu Usandizaga (Universitat Autonoma, Barcelona) ‘Foreign Women Writers of the Spanish Civil War’
  • Elizabeth Willis (GWACS): ‘Clinicians, Comrades and Compañeras: Aspects of Medicine and Health in Spain, 1936-1939’
  • Gerben Zaagsma (European University Institute) : ‘Jewish Volunteers in the International Brigades: Problems and Concerns’

23 May 2007 Research Seminar, “Music of Poetry and Truth: The BBC’s premiere of Poulenc’s Figure Humaine on 25 March 1945”. Claire Launchbury, Royal Holloway, University of London.

And book launch: Six Authors in Captivity: Literary Responses to the Occupation of France during World War II, eds Ethel Tolansky and Dr Nicole Thatcher, Peter Lang, 2007

22 October 2007 Research Seminar, "The Papon Affair in Pierre La Police's Comics: Irony, Mimesis and Memory", Dr Fabrice Leroy, Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, USA.

12 December 2007 London launch of The Journal of War and Culture Studies, edited by Debra Kelly, Martin Hurcombe and Nicola Cooper, published by Intellect.

23 April 2008 ‘Visions of Defeat’, a one-day symposium at the University of Bristol, co-organised with the Conflict & Culture Study Group. Speakers: Scott Soo (Southampton): ‘A Vision of Defeat? Spanish Republicans and the Onset of Exile in the southwest of France’; Rajendra Chitnis (Bristol): ‘Re-evaluating Bohemia’s 1620 defeat: the case of Jaroslav Durych’s Wallenstein trilogies’; Hanna Diamond (Bath): ‘Visions of the Exodus in France 1940’; Francis Graham-Dixon (Sussex): ‘Civilising the Germans: British occupation policy and the refugee crisis 1944-49’; Mike Basker (Bristol): ‘Defeat as Victory: fictional representations of the Russian Civil War’.

7 May 2008 Research Seminar, Dr Davide Deriu, SABE, University of Westminster, “Picturing ruinscapes: the Aerial Photograph as Image of Historical Trauma”. Dr Neil Matheson, MAD, University of Westminster: “Mourning Dresden: Aerial Warfare and the Natural History of Destruction”.

  Also Book Launch: The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture, eds Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas, Wallflower Press, 2007.

25 February 2009 Research Seminar: Creative Resistance: Fighting War with Word and Image. Dr Valerie Holman, ‘Print for Victory’, and Dr Caroline Perret, ‘A Case Study of Cooperative Artistic and Literary Resistance: Dubuffet, Fautrier, and their critics in the occupation of France and its aftermath’

Also Book Launch: Print for Victory: Book Publishing in England 1939-1945, Valerie Holman, London: British Library.