Fall 2014 Conference

The aim of this initiative is to establish research collaboration between an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars with the purpose of developing a wide-ranging project that analyses gender, war, and military culture from 1650 to the present. The project consists of a research group and a workshop series. It will result in an Oxford Handbook titled Gender, War and the Western World since 1650 of 33 chapters and over 600 pages to be published by Oxford University Press (contracted). The project investigates how gender, an amalgam of ideals and practices that give meaning to and socially differentiate male and female, contributed to the shaping of warfare and military culture and was simultaneously transformed by them. It explores these two threads by focusing on such themes as cultural representations of military and war and their role in (de)mobilization; the interconnections of the military and civil society; war violence and war experiences on the home and battle fronts; the consequences of participation in war and the military for citizenship; and post-war cultures and memories of war. Chronologically, the project covers the key periods of warfare development since 1650. While its main geographical focus is on Europe and the Americas (including the Caribbean), this history has to include the long-term processes of colonization and empire-building originating from sixteenth-century Europe, and their aftermath in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia. Thus the project allows for both, temporal comparisons that explore continuities and changes in a long-term perspective, and regional comparisons as well as an assessment of transnational influences on the entangled relationships between and among gender, warfare and military culture.

Poster (PDF)

Program (PDF)

5:30 – 7:30 • UNC–Chapel Hill • Institute for Arts and Humanities • Hyde Hall • University Room

5:30 – 6:00 pm

Registration and Reception

6:00 – 7:30 pm

6:00 pm: Welcome

KAREN HAGEMANN (UNC–Chapel Hill, Department of History)

JOHN MARTIN (Duke University, Department of History)

6:15 – 7:30 pm: Public Keynote

KRISTEN P. WILLIAMS (Clark University, Department of Political Science)

Gender, War, and Humanitarian Intervention in  the 21st Century

Discussion

Moderation: KAREN HAGEMANN (UNC–Chapel Hill, Department of History)

8:30 am: Registration and Welcome Coffee

9:00 am – 10:00 am

Panel I: Gendering the History of War: The Oxford Handbook: Approach and Concepts

Introduction: KAREN HAGEMANN (UNC–Chapel Hill, Department of History) and  STEFAN DUDINK (Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Gender Studies)

Moderation: DIRK BÖNKER (Duke University, Department of History)

Discussion

10:00 – 10:15 am: Coffee Break

10:15 am – 1:30 pm

Panels II and III: Gendering the History of the Age of the World Wars

Introduction: SONYA O. ROSE (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Birkbeck, University of London, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology)

Moderation: DIRK BÖNKER (Duke University, Department of History)

10:30 am – 12:00 pm

Panel II

Moderation: DIRK BÖNKER (Duke University, Department of History)

Mobilization for “Total” Warfare: Gender, Culture and Propaganda in the Age of World Wars—A Transatlantic Comparison

ANNEGRET FAUSER (UNC–Chapel Hill, Department of Music)

“Total War”: Society, State and Gender in East and West Europe during the First and Second World War

SUSAN GRAYZEL (University of Mississippi, Department of History)

War Societies, Citizenship and Gender: The American and Canadian Homefront during World War I and II

KIMBERLY JENSEN (Western Oregon University, Department of History)

Women and the Military in the Age of World Wars: History and Memory in Comparative Perspective

KAREN HAGEMANN (UNC-Chapel Hill, Department of History)

12:00 – 12:15 am: Coffee Break

12:15 – 1:30 pm

Comment 1: CLAUDIA KOONZ (Duke University, Department of History)

Comment 2: RICHARD KOHN (UNC–Chapel Hill, Department of History)

Discussion

1:30 – 2:30 pm: Lunch Break

2:30 – 6:00 pm

Panel III

Moderation: KAREN HAGEMANN (UNC–Chapel Hill, Department of History)

2:30 – 4:00 pm

Masculinity, Military Service and Combat in the Age of World Wars: A Transatlantic Comparison

THOMAS KÜHNE (Clark University, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies)

Colonial Soldiers, Race and Masculinity during and beyond World War I and II

RICHARD SMITH (Goldsmiths, University of London, Department of Media and Communications)

Sex and “Total War”: Sexuality and Sexual Violence in the Age of the World Wars

REGINA MÜHLHÄUSER (Hamburg Insititute for Social Research)

Taming Warfare: Gender and the New International Politics of Humanitarianism and Peace, 1900–1948

GLENDA SLUGA (University of Sydney, Department of History)

4:00 – 4:30 pm: Coffee Break

4:30 – 6:00  pm

Comment 1: ADRIANE LENTZ-SMITH (Duke University, Department of History)

Comment 2: JEAN H. QUATAERT (Binghamton University SUNY, Department of History)

Discussion

6:00 – 6:15 pm: Break

6:15 – 7:00 pm

The Production of The Oxford Handbook and the GWC Online Bibliography

7:30 pm: Dinner

9:00 am – 5:30 pm

9:00 am: Welcome Coffee

9:30 am – 12:45 pm

Panel IV and V: Gendering the History of Cold War,  Anti-Colonial Struggle and the Wars of Globalization

Introduction: DUBRAVKA ZARKOV (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Institute for Social Studies)

Moderation: MISCHA HONECK (German Historical Institute, Washington D.C.)

9:45 am – 11:00 pm

Panel IV

Moderation: MISCHA HONECK (German Historical Institute, Washington D.C.)

Gender, Demobilization and Social Order: Post-war Societies in Europe and the United States after 1918 and 1945

ERIKA KUHLMAN (Idaho State University, Department of History)

Gendering the Memories of World War II and the Holocaust: Europe and the United States in Comparison

FRANK BIESS (University of California, San Diego, Department of History)

Gender and Anti-colonial Warfare: The Decline of Empire and the Redistribution of Gendered Power after 1945

RAPHAELLE BRANCHE (CNRS Centre d’histoire sociale du XXe siècle)

11:00 – 11:15 am: Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:45 pm

Comment 1: KONRAD H. JARAUSCH (UNC-Chapel Hill, Department of History)

Comment 2: BRUCE HALL (Duke University, Department of History)

Discussion

12:45 – 2:00 pm: Lunch Break

2:00 – 5:45 pm

Panel V

2:00 – 3:30 pm

Moderation: STEFAN DUDINK (Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Gender Studies)

Challenges to Military Masculinities: Female Soldiers, Gay Rights and the Professionalization of Western Armies since 1945

D’ANN CAMPBELL (Culver-Stockton College)

The End of the Cold War, the Re-emergence of Small-scale National Wars and Sexual Violence as a Weapon of Warfare

DUBRAVKA ZARKOV (Erasmus University Rotterdam, Institute for Social Studies)

The United Nations, Gendered Human Rights and Peace Keeping since 1945

SANDRA WHITWORTH (York University, Department of Political Science)

Gender and the Current Wars of Globalization

KRISTEN P. WILLIAMS (Clark University, Department of Political Sciences)

3:30 – 4:00 pm: Coffee Break

4:00 – 5:30 pm

Comment 1: ROBERT JENKINS (UNC–Chapel Hill, Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies)

Comment 2: FRANCES HASSO (Duke University, International Comparative Studies, Sociology, and Gender Studies)

Discussion

5:30 pm

Closing Remarks: KAREN HAGEMANN (UNC–Chapel Hill, Department of History)

7:30 pm: Dinner