Conferences | Karen Hagemann

Workshop and Conference Series:

GENDER, WAR AND THE WESTERN WORLD, 1600-PRESENT
An Interdisciplinary and Transatlantic Project

The aim of this initiative was to establish a 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 1600 to the present. The project consisted of a research group and a workshop series. It resulted in an Oxford Handbook titled Gender, War, and the Western World Since 1600 of 31 chapters and over 800 pages published by Oxford University Press in 2020. The project investigated 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 explored 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 covered the key periods of warfare development since 1600. 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.

To realize the project, two conferences and related public workshops and lectures took place in Chapel Hill (20-22 February 2014 and 11-13 September 2014).

OVERVIEW OF THE EVENTS

Chapel Hill, 20 – 22 February 2014

20 February 2014, 1:30– 5:00 pm
Public Workshop 1:
GENDER, WAR AND EMPIRE IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

20 February 2014, 7:30 – 9:00 pm
UNC Chapel, Institute for Arts And Humanities, 2014 Mary Steve Reckford Memorial Lecture in European Studies:
AN AGE OF DESTRUCTION: WORLD WAR I ONE HUNDRED YEARS LATER

21 – 22 February 2014
Conference 1:
GENDER, WAR AND CULTURE: FROM COLONIAL CONQUEST, STANDING ARMIES AND REVOLUTIONARY WARS TO THE WARS OF NATIONS AND EMPIRES (1650s-1910s)

Chapel Hill, Thursday – Saturday, 11 – 13 September 2014

11 September 2014, 12:30 – 5:30 pm
Public Workshop 2:
GENDER, WAR AND HUMANITARIANISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

11 September 2014, 6:00 – 7:30 pm
Public Keynote 2:
GENDER, WAR, AND HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION IN THE 21ST CENTURY

12 – 13 September 2014
Conference 2:
GENDER, WAR AND CULTURE: FROM THE AGE OF THE WORLD WARS TO THE COLD WAR, ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLE AND THE WARS OF GLOBALIZATION (1910-Present)

CONVENERS:

Duke University
German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Triangle Institute for Security Studies, Durham
University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill

In co-operation with:

The International Institute for Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Radboud University Nijmegen, Institute for Gender Studies
Birkbeck, University of London
UNC Chapel Hill, Winston House European Study Center London

ORGANIZERS:

Dr. Karen Hagemann (UNC-Chapel Hill, Department of History / Curriculum in Peace, War and Defence) (Speaker and Main Organizer)