Call for Papers

‘Aftermaths of War: Women’s Movements and Female Activists, 1918-1923’

Conference dates: Wednesday 10 to Friday 12 September 2008 at Hinsley Hall, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.

Organisers: Ms Ingrid Sharp, Department of German, University of Leeds i.e.sharp@leeds.ac.uk and Dr Matthew Stibbe, Department of History, Sheffield Hallam University m.stibbe@shu.ac.uk

Following on from the publication in April 2007 of the volume A. S. Fell and I. E. Sharp (eds.) The Women’s Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives, 1914-19, Palgrave Macmillan, which deals with the responses of the international women’s movement to the First World War, the focus of this conference will be on the response, experience and representation of the organised women’s movement and individual activists to the aftermath of the war in the years 1918 and 1923. The approach is broadly historical, but we would welcome proposals from a range of different disciplines, such as Cultural and Gender/Women’s Studies, English, Sociology, Modern Languages and of course History. By bringing together scholars working on organised women and individual activists in national and transnational contexts, we hope to make a distinctive and worthwhile contribution to this area of studies.

Questions considered could include:

Can we identify commonalities in the experience, representation of and response to organised women in the aftermath of war? What was the contribution of the organised women’s movement or individual activists to cultural demobilisation and social (re)integration as well as international reconciliation? What was their role in rebuilding nations in the context of the mass displacement of populations and redrawn national boundaries? How was women’s war work viewed in the aftermath of war? Were the reactions similar in ‘victorious’ nations such as France and the United Kingdom and in ‘defeated’ nations such as Germany, Austria and Hungary? Did women experience – or were women expected to accept – responsibility for men’s wartime suffering? How were gender relations renegotiated in the context of some of the unresolved conflicts during the immediate aftermath of war?

We invite contributions from scholars working on all European nations caught up in the war, either as combatants or as neutrals, and are especially keen to include chapters on nations and individual activists less widely represented in the current literature in this area. We hope that the study of the Eastern European experience and the experience within non-combatant nations will impact on our understanding of the experience of Western countries such as France, Germany and the UK. We would therefore particularly welcome proposals dealing with organised women in Russia, the Baltic States and the successor states to the Habsburg Empire, as well as in the Netherlands, Belgium, the Scandinavian countries, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.

A key element of this project is the planned publication of a selection of papers in an edited volume (projected publication date 2010). To enhance the coherence of the volume and to ensure that authors engage with the ideas of other contributors in their chapters, a follow-up workshop is envisaged for Easter 2009 at which draft chapters will be presented and at which thematic strands will be further developed.

Contributors should seek funding from their own institution in the first instance, but it is anticipated that some support will be available for attendance at both the conference and workshop.

Please send us proposals, including working title and brief description of your paper (max. 500 words), by 15 January 2008.