Thursday, 24 January 2019 at 9:00 am – Friday, 25 January 2019 at 7:30 pm

No End to the War: Cultures of Violence and Care in the aftermath of the First World War

Date: Thursday 24th January 2019 - Friday 25th January 2019

Time: 9am – 7.30pm

Location: Samuel Alexander Building, University of Manchester, Room A101

Tickets: Free - Available on Eventbrite: https://no-end-to-the-war.eventbrite.com 

Europe’s post-war transition of 1918/1919 has received new scholarly attention in light of the First World War centenary. There has been a recent attempt to contextualise this transition, and to understand how the period after 1918 witnessed both continuing traces of violence and a renewed focus on caregiving. Particularly relevant are the ways in which, across Europe, the war gave rise not only to paramilitary violence, civil unrest, and military occupation, but also new cultures of humanitarianism. This conference aims to act as an intellectual and public intervention in the discussions of 2018 and 2019, and engage with key issues in the cultural history of the transition from war to peace.

This conference seeks to stimulate dialogue between historians of post-war violence, occupation, caregiving and humanitarianism, and contribute to a new integrated history of the aftermath of the First World War.

This is a shared activity with Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Manchester and Leeds University.

This event is co-hosted by the War, Conflict, and Society Research Group at Manchester Met, led by Mercedes Peñalba-Sotorrío and which, within the framework of the History Research Centre, focuses on exploring the many ways in which war and conflict shape society, and how the transformations and challenges of wartime are translated into and influence post-war societies.

Programme

Thursday 24th January

09:00 – 9:30 Registration Samuel Alexander Building [SA] A101

09:30 – 11:00 Session 1: Panel

Cultures of Violence and Care in Post-War Imperial Contexts SA A101

  • Chair: James Connolly (University College London)
  • Mahon Murphy (Kyoto University) “Creating ‘The City of an Idea’: British Town Planners and the Military Occupation of Jerusalem, 1917-1921”
  • Alexia Moncrieff (University of Leeds) – “Imperial Pensioners, Domestic Violence and the British Ministry of Pensions: State Involvement in Family Life”
  • Hilary Buxton (University of Leeds) – “On the Borders of Care: Navigating Imperial Responsibility in South Asia and the British West Indies”

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee and Tea Break

11:30 – 13:00 Session 2: Parallel Panels

Violence and Humanitarianism SA A101

  • Chair: Mercedes Peñalba-Sotorrío (Manchester Metropolitan University)
  • Chris Millington (Manchester Metropolitan University) – “The gangrenous leg: Some comments on the discourse of disability and sickness in French interwar politics”
  • Roberto Mazza (University of Limerick) “Sectarianizing Jerusalem: humanitarianism and paramilitarism in the post-war era”
  • Thomas Schmutz (University of Zurich) “East of the Bosporus: Violence, Humanitarianism and a fragile new Order”

Post-War Medicine between Violence and Care SA A112

  • Chair: Ana Carden-Coyne (University of Manchester)
  • Justin Fantauzzo (Memorial University of Newfoundland) “Mad with Malaria: British Ex-Servicemen, Violence and Care after the First World War”
  • Marjorie Gehrhardt (University of Reading) “Caring for mutilated veterans: the Blind Ex-Servicemen’s Union in post-war France”
  • Evan P. Sullivan (University at Albany) “Better Speech for Better Americans: Manhood, Citizenship, and the Section of Defects of Hearing and Speech after World War I”

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 16:00 Session 3: Roundtable

Disability in comparative and transnational perspectives SA A101

  • Chair: Jessica Meyer (University of Leeds)
  • Adam Luptak (Oriel College, University of Oxford) “Czechoslovak disabled veterans and the War victims’ orphanage in Nac Eradec”
  • Michael Burri (Temple University) “Clemens von Pirquet and Postwar Austrian Public Health Celebrity”
  • Michael Robinson (University of Liverpool) “Definitely Wrong? The Ministry of Pensions’ treatment of mentally-ill Great War veterans in interwar British and Irish society”
  • Helena de Silva (University of Lisbon) “Caring for psychological disabled Portuguese war veterans (1918-1948)”
  • Silvia Correia (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) “Incomplete heroes? The disabled soldiers of the WW1 in Portugal”

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee and Tea Break

16:30 – 18:00 Session 4: Keynote Speaker SA A101

Robert Gerwarth (University College Dublin) “Violence and Humanitarianism in the Age of Total War”

Friday 25th January

09:00 – 9:30 Registration

09:30 – 11:00 Session 5: Panel

Violence, Care and the Creation of Knowledge SA A101

  • Chair: Alex Dowdall
  • Tomás Irish (Swansea University) “The ‘moral basis’ of reconstruction: Intellectual Relief in the aftermath of the war”
  • Taline Garibian (University of Oxford) “The Quest for Evidence. Forensic Investigations of War Crimes (1914-1920)”
  • Jessamy Carlson (The National Archives, Kew) “Lest we forget? Reflections on the centenaries of the First World War and its aftermath”

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee and Tea Break

11:30 – 13:00 Session 6: Parallel Panels

Geographies of Humanitarianism SA A101

  • Geographies of Humanitarianism SA A101
    • Chair: Laure Humbert (University of Manchester)
    • Elizabeth Piller (University College Dublin) “Violence and Care Abroad – Diaspora Communities and Post-war Europe: A German-American Case study”
    • Ben Holmes (University of Exeter) “A war of starvation after the war: British Humanitarian debates about German suffering, c.1918-1919”
    • Christophe Declercq (University College London) “Disappearing from view: brushing over half a million of returning Belgian refugees under the carpet”
    • Julie Powell (Ohio State University) “A duty of Humanity and Gratitude: Soldier Rehab from National Duty to Humanitarian Right”.

Representing Violence and Care SA A112

  • Chair: Jean-Marc Dreyfus (University of Manchester)
  • Francesca Piana (University of Geneva) “Humanitarianism in Practice. Europe and its Displaced Populations after WWI”
  • Dominiek Dendooven (In Flanders' Fields Museum, Ypres) “Curating Centennial Complexities: displaying the aftermath of the First World War”
  • Ana Carden-Coyne (University of Manchester) “Humanitarian Aesthetics and Displacement during the First World War: Flows, Queues and Stasis”

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 16:00 Session 7: Roundtable

Post-War Occupations SA A101

  • Chair: John Horne (Trinity College Dublin)
  • Tammy Proctor (Utah State University) “Civilian War Relief and the Problem of Peace, 1917-1920”
  • Sean Brady (Trinity College Dublin) “Urban Reflections: Occupiers, the Occupied and Urban Space in the Aftermath of the First World War”
  • James Connolly (University College London) “Conflict Continues: Tensions and Violence in the French-occupied Rhineland, 1918-30”
  • Emilia Salvanou (Hellenic Open University) “Violence and the Allied Occupation of the Ottoman Empire – between remembrance and oblivion”
  • Matthew Haultain-Gall (Université Catholique de Louvain) “A Friendly Occupation: The Allies in Belgium after the Armistice, 1918–19”

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee and Tea Break

16:30 – 18:00 Session 8: Keynote Speaker SA A101

  • Alison Fell (University of Leeds) “Women, War & Care: The Legacies of the First World War on Nursing & Nurses in Britain, France and Belgium”

For more information, please contact:

Mercedes Peñalba-Sotorrío · M.Penalba-Sotorrio@mmu.ac.uk

Book Tickets

RAH! - Research in Arts and Humanities