The First World War in a Gender Context – Topics and Perspectives

Thursday, September 29, to Saturday, October 1, 2011

Venue: Seminarraum Alte Kapelle (seminar room Old Chapel), Campus of the University of

Vienna, Spitalgasse 2–4, 1090 Vienna, Austria

This international conference intends to reflect on the necessity and potential of a gendered history of the First World War, focusing on five selected topics that appear to be constitutive for the field:

the complex relationship between home front and front line, experiences of violence, forms of visualization of the war, peace efforts, and the impact of war on concepts of citizenship.

It takes the upcoming centenary of 2014 as an occasion for

• in-depth discussion,
• reviews of previous studies, and
• conceptualizations of future research perspectives.

The conference is specifically interested in strengthening comparative and transnational approaches. In bringing together scholars from various academic backgrounds it aims at reframing the catastrophe of mass mobilization and mass killing in the years 1914–1918 in a gender context.

The conference is an event of the research platform “Repositioning of Women’s and Gender History in an Altered European Context. Networking – Resources – Projects” of the University of Vienna (www.univie.ac.at/Geschichte/Neuverortung-Geschlechtergeschichte) in cooperation with the “Arbeitskreis Historische Friedensforschung” (www.akhf.de/).

Concept: Christa Hämmerle (University of Vienna, Austria),

Birgitta Bader-Zaar (University of Vienna, Austria), Oswald Überegger (University of Hildesheim, Germany)

Organisation: Michaela Hafner (University of Vienna, Austria)

Contact: neuverortung.geschlechtergeschichte(@)univie.ac.at

Preliminary programme

Thursday, September 29, 2011, 9:30 AM – 1:00 PM

Welcome and Introduction
Christa Hämmerle, Birgitta Bader-Zaar, Oswald Überegger

PANEL I: Home Front

Manon Pignot (Amiens/France): French Boys and Girls in the Great War: Use of Gender for a History of Childhood’s Experiences of the First World War
Silke Fehlemann (Düsseldorf/Germany): “Mobilization of Mothers”: German Mothers of Soldiers during World War I

Claudia Siebrecht (Dublin/Ireland): The Female Mourner

Alison S. Fell (Leeds/UK): The Afterlives of French and British First World War Heroines

Commentator: Gunda Barth-Scalmani (Innsbruck/Austria)

Moderator: to be announced

Thursday, September 29, 2011, 2:30 PM – 6:00 PM

PANEL II: Front

Marco Mondini (Trento/Italy): The Construction of a Masculine Warrior Ideal in the Letters from the
Front: an Italian Case

Matteo Ermacora (Venice/Italy): Women behind the Lines: The Friuli Region as a Case Study of Total Mobilisation 1915–1917

Susan Grayzel (Oxford, MS/USA): The Baby in the Gas Mask: Air Power, Chemical Warfare, and the Gendered Division between the Fronts during the First World War and Its Aftermath
Jason Crouthamel (Allendale, MI/USA): “We Need Real Men”: The Impact of the First World War on Germany’s Sexual Reform Movement
Commentator: Christa Hämmerle (Vienna/Austria)
Moderator: Peter Becker (Vienna/Austria)
Friday, September 30, 2011, 9:30 AM – 12:00 noon

PANEL III: Violence

DorotheeWierling (Hamburg/Germany): Communicating War Violence: Imaginations and Descriptions in the Writings of a Berlin Family during the Great War
Gabriela Dudeková (Bratislava/Slovakia): Suffering and Catharsis: Gendered Perceptions of Violence during the Great War and its Aftermath
Marie-Emmanuelle Reytier (Hamburg/Germany) / Dorota Kurpiers (Opole/Poland): Rape Victims and Rapists: an Introduction to Sexual Crimes Committed by German, Austro-Hungarian and French troops during and after the First World War, 1914–1925
Commentator: Michael Geyer (Chicago, IL/USA)
Moderator: Oswald Überegger (Hildesheim/Germany)
Friday, September 30, 2011, 1:30 PM – 3:45 PM

PANEL IV: Visualization
Beatriz Pichel (Madrid/Spain): Photography and Masculinity during the First World War in France
Joëlle Beurier (Coincy/France): Women, Photographs and Non-Fighting Men: A Redefinition of Masculinity in Wartime
Julia Köhne (Vienna/Austria): Visualizing War Hysterics: Strategies of Feminization and Re-Masculinization in Scientific Cinematography, 1916–1918
Commentator: Monika Bernold (Vienna/Austria)
Moderator: Nina Verheyen (Cologne/Germany)

Friday, September 30, 2011, 4:15 PM – 6:30 PM

PANEL V: Peace
Bruna Bianchi (Venice/Italy): Towards a New Internationalism: Pacifist Journals edited by Women (1914-1919)

Ingrid Sharp (Leeds/UK): “A Foolish Dream of Sisterhood”: Anti-Pacifist Debates in the German Women’s Movement 1914–1919

Thomas F. Schneider (Osnabrück/Germany): “Then Horror Came Into Her Eyes …”:
(De-)Constructions of Masculinity in German Anti-War Texts on World War I, 1914–1918

Commentator: to be announced

Moderator: to be announced

Saturday, October 1, 2011, 9:30 AM – 1:00 PM

PANEL VI: Citizenship
Nikolai Vukov (Sofia/Bulgaria): Women’s Public Responses to War and Issues of Citizenship in Bulgaria during World War I
Virginija Jureniene (Kaunas/Lithuania): Lithuanian Women during World War I: Activities and Aspirations
Tina Bahovec (Klagenfurt/Austria): Of Women’s Armies, Heroic Mothers and Insane Men. Strategies and Discourses of the National and Political Mobilisation of Carinthian Slovene Women from 1917 to 1920
Allison Scardino Belzer (Savannah, GA/USA): Making Women into Citizens: The Great War in Italy
Commentator: Birgitta Bader-Zaar (Vienna/Austria)
Moderator: to be announced
In collaboration with the Arbeitskreis Historische Friedensforschung, sponsored by:
Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät