CfP: Thinking Sex after the Great War
International Conference, Brussels, 17-19 October 2018
The
last few decades, the multifaceted relations between gender and the
First World War have been explored in various historical studies.
Historians have analysed the role of gender in the run-up to the
outbreak of the war and in the war propaganda, they have depicted the
gendered experience of the war by soldiers and civilians, and probed the
ways in which the war challenged and blurred existing gender roles. Yet
they have also described how the war in the end often seemed to
reinforce gender stereotypes. Throughout this rich literature, the
question of the impact of the war on gender relations often resurfaces,
although most scholars seem to agree that a definitive and general
answer on the ‘net result’ of the war in terms of increasing or
decreasing equality, is hard to reach and probably beside the point.
The
organizers of this conference invite historians to reflect on the
impact of the Great War on gender from the specific angle of learned
discourses. Intellectuals, philosophers, social scientists,
physiologists, psychologists and scientists witnessed and experienced
the war personally. Some of them were integrated in the military war
machine (either as ‘common’ soldiers, officers or experts) and were
relocated, while others stayed at home and continued their jobs, or
registered themselves as ‘conscientious objectors’ and explicitly
opposed the war. Like other citizens, they lost family members and
friends, experienced love and desire, excitement and disillusionment,
enthusiasm and indignation. These experiences inevitably impacted upon
their view of society, human nature and the role of the sexes and
sexuality. The conference will focus on the trajectories and experiences
of intellectuals before, during and after the war, and how the war
reinforced, challenged or changed research agendas, paradigms and
knowledge about gender and sexuality.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- the links between sexuality, aggression and gender in post-war psychology, psychiatry, sexology, sociology;
- the exchange between military and civilian medical care, and the consequences for the interwar medical views on sex;
- the significance of the war for theories on the instinctual life of men and women;
- the influence of personal and intimate encounters of middle class intellectuals and working class men and women in the military (soldiers, nurses...);
- the impact of the presence of colonial troops in Europe and the resulting interracial sexual/romantic relationships, miscegenation etc.;
- female intellectuals and the experience of the patriotic/nationalistic wave cutting through the transnational feminist movement;
- the effects of travelling and dislocation (including experiences in the Ottoman Empire, the Middle-East...) on intellectual discourses on gender and sexuality.
Abstract deadline: 15 December 2017. Notification of acceptance: February 2018.
The organizers will be able to cover travel and accommodation costs of a limited number of participants.
A selection of papers will be published afterwards in an edited volume or special issue of a journal.
Organizing committee:
Henk
de Smaele (University of Antwerp); Cécile Vanderpelen (Université Libre
de Bruxelles); Gita Deneckere (Ghent University); Aurore François
(UCL); Amandine Lauro (Université Libre de Bruxelles/FNRS); Laurence Van
Ypersele (UCL); Florent Verfaille (Cegesoma/State Archives of Belgium);
Kaat Wils (KU Leuven)
Contact Email: avg.carhif@amazone.be