Faded Memories and Shaky Pens: Doughboys Remember the Great War in a Country that Forgot

Edward Gutiérrez — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:30:00 PST

Edward A. Gutiérrez received his Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University under the direction of Geoffrey Parker. His most recent awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Grant and a Memory and Memorialization Postdoctoral Fellowship with CNRS in Paris, France. He teaches history at the University of Hartford.

'Let us die manfully for our brethren': Commemorating the Battle of the Falkland Islands, December 1914

Mark Connelly — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 19:00:00 PST

In 1914 British power rested on its economic might and its immense naval strength. The image of the Royal Navy as the guardian of the seas was a very powerful one across the British Empire. Early on in the war the Royal Navy seemed to confirm its role as international policeman with the defeat of the German Admiral Graff Spee’s squadron off the Falkland Islands in December 1914. The paper will look at the way this engagement was presented at the time in Britain and its continuing importance to the Royal Navy in a war that increasingly deflected attention away from the senior service and towards the army. The battle also served to raise the profile of the Falkland Islands in the British public imagination and was used to buttress the concept that every part of the British Empire played a useful role in the maintenance of British values and, consequently, international stability. Finally, the battle was also important to concepts of local identity in the Falkland Islands giving islanders a sense of their significance and self-worth within the imperial orbit.

‘Loyal until Death:’ African Veterans’ Memory of War Service: 1919-1943

Dan Bullard — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:00:00 PST

Dan Bullard is completing his doctoral dissertation in European and colonial history at York University. Grounded in extensive research in Africa and Europe, his dissertation explores the remembrance of German colonial rule in Africa, Asia and Oceania between 1919 and 1943 in both former colony and former metropole.

‘Loyal and Civilized’: Aboriginal Soldiers, the Department of Indian Affairs, and the Production of a Collective Memory, 1916-1940

Brian MacDowall — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:00:00 PST

Brian MacDowall is a PhD Candidate at York University. His dissertation, tentatively entitled “Finding Space for Redress: Veterans, the Government, and Aboriginal Lands in Canada, 1916-1930,” assesses the administration of Aboriginal Great War veterans by the Department of Indian Affairs, focusing on the Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal use of reserve lands for Re-Establishment purposes.

The Chamber of Princes: The Great War and the Contested Vision of India’s Future

Kris Radford — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:00:00 PST

Kris Radford is a Doctoral Candidate at the Department of History, York University, under the supervision of Douglas Peers. He is currently working on his dissertation, ‘Exalted Order: British indirect rule in the Muslim world 1880-1914’, which investigates how ideas of governing Muslim peoples flowed from India to other parts of the British empire.

The Great War in Popular Detective Fiction

Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:00:00 PST

Marzena Sokolowska-Paryz is Assistant Professor in the Section of British Literature, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, Poland. She is the author of The Myth of War in British and Polish Poetry, 1939-1945 and is currently finishing a project on the representations of the Great War in post-memory fiction and film.

Otto Dix and the Great War: Reality, Memory and the Construction of Identity in the portfolio War of 1924

Michele Wijegoonaratna — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 09:00:00 PST

Michele Wijegoonaratna is a PhD. Candidate in Art History at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and a Research Assistant at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This paper forms part of her dissertation titled: Tradition, Innovation and the Construction of Identity in Otto Dix’s Portraits and Self-Portraits 1912-1927.

From “Backstabbing Arabs” to “Deserting Kurds”: Reading nationalism through Turkish accounts of World War I

Veysell Simsek — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 10:30:00 PST

Veysel Simsek is a PhD candidate at the Department of History, McMaster University. His dissertation concentrates on the Ottoman “grand strategy” during the turbulent years of war and reform between 1826 and 1841. His broader research interest includes history of the late Ottoman Empire, war and society in the modern Middle East and Ottoman-European encounters.

‘I Sing of My Comrades’: Reconsidering the Elegies of The Great War and the Spanish Civil War

Patricia Rae — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 10:30:00 PST

Patricia Rae is Professor of English at Queen’s University. She is the author of The Practical Muse: Pragmatist Poetics in Hulme, Pound and Stevens, Modernism and Mourning, and a new book manuscript, Modernist Orwell. Her articles on Spain and World War I appear in The Journal of War and Culture Studies, The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, Queen’s Quarterly, and in The Spanish Civil War: History, Memory, Representation (forthcoming, University of Wales Press.)

The experience of the First World War in Eastern Europe by Austro-Hungarian soldiers

Wolfram Dornik — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 10:30:00 PST

Finished his studies at the University of Graz 2003 on History, Media and International Relations (dissertation: Memory Culture on Austrian Websites on Holocaust and National Socialism). Research Assistant at the LBI for Research on the Consequences of War since 2004; research on: First World War (Eastern Front), history of Austria(-Hungary) 1914-1955.