Call for Papers

Honouring the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, the University of Calgary’s Department of History and Centre for Military and Strategic Studies invite academics and graduate students from around the world to share new scholarly work on this global conflict. The Great War has attracted no end of historiographical controversy since the guns fell silent. Historians are constantly using innovative and often inter-disciplinary methods to answer original questions, and offer new perspectives on established debates.

This conference sets out to explore the complex and diverse reverberations of the Second World War after 1945. The notion of "disturbing pasts" refers to the experience of war and violence. But the aim is to understand how and why these experiences continue to disturb a later present, and how some people later disturb an apparently dormant past.

Although historians dealing with war will inevitably be called to concentrate their attention on violence, often the understanding of how violence itself was perceived, understood, imagined and experienced by combatants and civilians is neglected. Much still needs to be said about how war was shaped by and, in turn, influenced, modern perceptions of violence.

A three-day international conference will explore the impact of this first truly global war on the history, culture, philosophy, language and politics of the 100 years following it. Papers are invited from the international scholar's community in English in a wide a range of disciplines – history, politics, world literatures, philosophy, sociology, human geography, media, critical and cultural studies, international law, linguistics, colonial and postcolonial studies.

For much of the twentieth century, outer space has been envisioned as not only a site of heavenly utopias, but also the ultimate battlefield. Science fact and science fiction celebrated visions of progress and renewal. Astrofuturists imagined a future in which the wonders of space exploration would unite humankind and eliminate violent conflict worldwide. Nonetheless, many of the projects and preoccupations central to Western space thought, such as the efforts to establish a military base on the moon, are testaments to the darker and more violent side of astroculture.

On the eve of the First World War's 100th anniversary, the state of our knowledge about this conflict stands at a crossroads. Although the study of this momentous event has been rejuvenated during the last 25 years, books and articles continue to assess familiar aspects of the war with familiar methods. At a time when many countries will be commemorating the war in simplified national terms, there is an opportunity to counter these often reductive commemorations by inviting scholars to develop a more nuanced and global understanding of the First World War.

From the Second World War to the end of the Portuguese colonial wars, the European armed forces (British, Belgian, French, Dutch, Spanish and Portuguese) were confronted with new experiences of guerilla warfare. The objective of this conference is to better understand how decolonization transformed the institutions, ideas and practices of the armed forces during and after these wars of independence.

Der Japanisch-Deutsche Krieg (Nichidoku senso) ist ein Teilkonflikt des Ersten Weltkriegs, der in Deutschland weitgehend in Vergessenheit geraten ist. Japan, das als Verbündeter Großbritanniens in den Ersten Weltkrieg eintrat, erklärte dem Deutschen Reich im August 1914 den Krieg und eroberte die deutschen Territorien in China (Qingdao) und im Südpazifik.

Technische Innovationen bedeuten nicht immer einen Fortschritt zum Wohle der Menschheit. Ganz im Gegenteil. Technik, die mit einer positiven Intention auf den Weg des Entstehens gebracht worden ist, wurde nicht selten zu einem "Instrument des Schreckens", das unzählige Menschenleben kostete. Seit der Antike ist eine Interdependenz der beiden Größen Krieg und Technik nachweisbar, die zeigt, dass allerhand innovative Ideen zweckentfremdet wurden, um einem potentiellen Gegner möglichst viel Schaden zuzufügen.

We are looking for presenters who can enrich our understanding of the place and role of children and youth in war during the first half of the twentieth century. The goal of our conference is to come to grips with a fundamental paradox: How was it possible for modern societies to reimagine childhood as a space of sheltered existence and mobilize children for war at the same time? And how did modern warfare disrupt or accelerate rites of passage in the realms of gender, sexuality, national loyalty, ethnic and racial identity, and military involvement?