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
[log in to unmask] and Dr Matthew Stibbe,
Department of History,
Sheffield Hallam University [log in to unmask]

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.




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