Cultural Encounters during Global War (1914-1918) - Traces, Spaces, Legacies
The First World War resulted in an unprecedented range of encounters between peoples from different ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds. Soldiers from across the globe travelled to different theatres of war – Europe, the Middle East, East Africa, Egypt, Gallipoli – where they not only encountered fellow-soldiers and non-combatants with different languages, religions or customs, but also interacted with friendly or belligerent civilians. Between 1914 and 1918, on French soil alone, there were over 1 million Asian and African men, both soldiers and non-combatants, in addition to soldiers from Australia, New Zealand and North America.
Europe would never be the same again not just in terms of the war’s wreckage but in terms of people, ethnicities and cultures that were encountered, manipulated, studied, befriended. These encounters not only affected the individuals involved, but left deep traces in the literature, arts and culture of the times. Simultaneously, a different kind of "cultural encounter" was being engineered within Europe: the belligerent states were each trying to win over the neutral nations by funding cultural institutions and trying to influence artists, writers and opinion makers throughout the war. Neutral countries, particularly Sweden and Switzerland, became hubs for the activities of anti-colonial revolutionaries from Asia and North Africa. Furthermore, belligerent countries carried out intensive propaganda in Europe as well as in the colonies to ensure either imperial loyalty or to mobilize anti-colonial feelings and actions.
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to investigate the different kinds of encounters, exchanges and entanglements happening during wartime. The conference aims to overcome the dominant national and geographical approaches to the First World War and seeks to investigate moments and processes of cultural encounters, exchange, porosity and (mis-) understanding from different disciplinary perspectives, including history, geography, literature, anthropology, cultural, area, visual and gender studies.
Conference jointly organised by "Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict: Colonials, Neutrals and Belligerents during the First World War" (CEGC) and The German Historical Institute London
Conference Venues: The Council Room, King’s College London, Strand Campus, London WC2R 2LS (Thursday 21 January) | GHI London, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ (Friday 22 January)
Please note that spaces at the conference are limited. If you are interested in attending this event, please contact Daniel Steinbach (daniel.steinbach@kcl.ac.uk).
-----------------------------------
Programme;
Thursday 21 January
09.00 Registration
09.30 Welcome - Santanu Das | Daniel Steinbach
10.00 Session 1 - The Front and Beyond. Military Encounters
Chair: Santanu Das (King’s College London)
Michelle Moyd (Indiana University Bloomington): The Intimacies of Column Life - Emotion and Gender in the East African Campaign
Anna Maguire (King’s College London): "A Pageant of Empire?" Colonial Entanglements in Military Camps
Burcin Cakir (Glasgow Caledonian University): Life at the Trenches - Scenes and Narrations from Gallipoli
11.30 Coffee break
11.45 Session 2 - Negotiating Nation, Race and Gender
Chair: Alison Fell
Amany Soliman (University of Alexandria): Painful Encounters - The British Medical arrangements in Egypt during the First World War
Nadia Atia (Queen Mary University of London): Nursing Narratives in the Middle East, 1914-1919
Angela K. Smith (Plymouth University): Outsider Positions - Negotiating Nationality and Memory in the War Writing of Enid Bagnold
Rachel Gillett (Harvard University): Women at War with Race - Women’s work and World War One Encounters
01.30 Lunch
02.30 Session 3 - Uneasy Coexistence. Soldiers and Civilians
Chair: John Horne (Trinity College Dublin)
Nicole Immig (Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena): Urban Spaces of Cultural Encounters? The City of Salonica in World War One
Mahon Murphy (Trinity College Dublin): The British Military Occupation of Jerusalem 1917-1920. Soldiers as Tourists and Pilgrims?
Daniel Steinbach (King’s College London): Balancing Friends and Enemies - The Allied Occupation of German East Africa
04.00 Tea Break
04.15 Session 4 - Emerging Racial and National Identities
Chair: Heather Jones (London School of Economics)
Stacy Fahrenthold (University of California at Berkeley): Becoming "Syrian" on the Battlefield - Ottoman Emigrant Troops on the Western Front
Richard Smith (Goldsmiths, University of London): Pan-African Perspectives among West Indian Troops during and after the First World War
Jennifer Keene (Chapman University): African American Soldiers in a Black World: The Politics of Cultural Interactions
06.00 Drinks Reception (Council Room, King’s College London)
07.00 End of Day 1
Friday 22 January
09.00 Arrival
09.30 Welcome - Andreas Gestrich
09.45 Session 5 - Pan-Islamism and Anti-Colonial Agitation
Chair: Justin Jones (University of Oxford)
Samuel Krug (Freie Universität Berlin): North Africans in the "Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient" - Between Subjugation and anti-European Propaganda
Odile Moreau (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier/IMAF Paris): Cultural Encounters in a Neutral Country - A transnational anti-colonial movement acting in Spain
Piro Rexhepi (New York University): An Ummah after the Ummah. Post-Ottoman Pan-Islamism and Anticolonialism in the Balkans
11.15 Coffee break
11.30 Session 6 - Germany’s Revolutionary Programme
Chair: Heike Liebau (Zentrum Moderner Orient)
Jennifer Jenkins (University of Toronto): Global Strategy and National Committees in Berlin during the First World War
Larissa Schmid (Freie Universität Berlin/Zentrum Moderner Orient): Tracing Sheich Salih at-Tunisi in Transnational Networks in the First World War
Tessa Lobbes (Universiteit Utrecht): German Pan-Islamic Agitation in the Dutch Indies and the Allied Counter Propaganda
Geert Buelens (Universiteit Utrecht): German Agitation in Neutral Belgium
01.30 Lunch
02.30 Session 7 - Traces of Wartime Encounters
Chair: Jay Winter (Yale University)
Melvin Page (East Tennessee State University): Africa's First "High-Tech War - The Technological Impact of World War One on Africans
Michael Hammond (University of Southampton): Blues in the Trenches
Lynda Mugglestone (University of Oxford): Language Barriers? Contact, Conflict, and Communication in 1914-1918
04.00 Tea Break
04.15 Session 8 - Cosmopolitans at War
Chair: Andreas Gestrich (German Historical Institute London)
Jay Winter (Yale University): Pierr Loti - Going Native
Ziad Elmarsafy (King’s College London): Massignon’s War
Santanu Das (King’s College London): East-East by East-West. Tagore and the First World War
05.45 Closing Remarks
06.30 Conference Dinner (The Library, German Historical Institute London)
08.30 End of Conference
-----------------------------------
Contact:
Dr. Daniel Steinbach
King's College London