This international conference brings together scholars from more than eleven nations and community groups from across the UK to explore aspects of opposition to the First World War during and in the aftermath of conflict. The academic aspect of the conference will consider how resistance to the war was expressed in a variety of complex and often intertwining ways. A diverse selection of papers will look at the cultural, political, religious and international anti-war responses, considering how resistance was played out in these different areas. The conference on Saturday will showcase the research and projects being undertaken by a number of different community groups and there will be a particular focus on conscientious objection. Information stalls, films and performances will run alongside papers on conscientious objectors, feminist resistance and creative opposition to the war. The combination of academic and community based research that will be presented at the conference will help to shed light on a less well-known aspect of the First World War and will consequently contribute to a broadening of the narratives of remembrance of the war in these centenary years.
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PROGRAMME
Resistance to War March 18th-20th 2016
Conference Programme
Day 1 Friday 18th March 2016
8.30-9.00 Registration (carries on during breaks throughout the day)
9.00-11.00 Keynote Lectures
Sarah Hudspith (University of Leeds), ‘A world without borders: Tolstoy’s vision of peace’
June Hannam (University of the West of England), ‘Isabella Ford : campaigning for peace as a socialist and a feminist in World War One.’
11:00- 11:30 Coffee Break
11.30-13.00
Panel 1: Legacies of Commemoration
Christian Bartolf (Ghandi Information Centre, Berlin), ‘Karl Kraus, Kurt Tucholsky, Carl von Ossietzky and the “Nie Wieder Krieg!“ (Never again War!) demonstrations between 1919 and 1924 in Germany and Austria’
Irit Dekel (Humboldt-University Berlin, and Bard College Berlin) and Tamar Katriel (University of Haifa), ‘Remembering Ernst Friedrich and his post-WWI anti-war legacy’
Christina Theodosiou (Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris) ‘Remembering 1917: anti-war commemorations in France in the aftermath of the Great War’
Panel 2: Jewish Resistance
Markus Kirchhoff (Saxonian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Leipzig), ‘Intermediaries between Nations? German-Jewish Political Opposition to War 1914–1919’
Cynthia Wachtell (Yeshiva University), ‘One Man Among Many: New York’s Socialist Jews and Resistance to World War One’
Jagoda Wierzejska (Polish Literature Institute, University of Warsaw), ‘“Everywhere in today Europe we are inheritors of ourselves”: Remarks on the pacifistic idea in the works of Józef Wittlin’
Panel 3: Anti-militarism
Anders Ahlbäck (Åbo Akademi University), ‘Army critique, democratization and male citizenship in the Nordic countries, 1900–1930’
André Keil (Durham University), ‘Activists, the State and the Struggle for Civil Liberties: The Union of Democratic Control and the Bund Neues Vaterland during the First World War’
Brigitte Rath (University of Vienna), ‘War Resistance in Gendered Contexts: The National and International Efforts of the Austrian “Bund der Kriegsdienstgegner”’
13.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00- 16.00 Postgraduate Research Panels
Panel 4: International Resistance and Literary Representations of Resistance
International Resistance
Camiel Oomen (The University of Göttingen), ‘International Pacifism in the Interwar Period: Problems Concerning international Co-operation for Collective Action. The case of a Dutch Pacifist Youth-Movement.’
Avi Klein (Haifa University), ‘The Strike Against War’
Aled Eirug (Swansea University/Cardiff University), ‘Opposition to the Great War in Wales’
Literary Representations of Resistance
Marie-Michèle Doucet (University of Montréal), ‘Disarmament of Hatred through Children’s Literature: Madeleine Vernet’s Tales of Peace and Reconciliation’
Martin Malone (University of Sheffield, White Rose Consortium), ‘Re-reading the Canon’
Panel 6: Resistance and Gender and Literary Representations of Resistance
Resistance and Gender
Sarah Hellawell (Northumbria University), ‘”Freedom lies at the Bottom of these great Problems”: A Feminist Campaign for Peace’
Philippa Read (University of Leeds, White Rose Consortium), ‘In Defence of Life: Marcelle Capy’s Resistance to War.’
Sabine Grimshaw (University of Leeds/Imperial War Museum), ‘Representation and Resistance: Anti-War Women during the First World War’
Corinne Painter (University of Leeds), ‘”Better to be killed than to Kill”: Pacifism and Jewish Identity in the Works of Clementine Krämer (1873-1942)’
16.00-16:30 Coffee Break
16.30 – 17.30 Keynote Lecture
Benjamin Ziemann (University of Sheffield) ‘Resistance to War in Germany, 1914-1918’
18.00 Reception and Conference Dinner
Day 2 Saturday 19th March
NB: Broderick Hall is available for setting up stalls and registration from 8.30
9.00-11.00
Panel 1 (break-out room): Individual Women/Feminist Resistance
Karen Hunt (University of Keele), ‘An anti-militarist not a pacifist: Dora Montefiore and the Great War’
Sandi Cooper (College of Staten Island and The Graduate School – CUNY) ‘Feminism Fractured: World War I as a Watershed’
Barbara Winslow (Brooklyn College, The City University of New York), ‘Sylvia Pankhurst: Not a peace campaigner, but a feminist, socialist, suffragette, AND activist against the British government’s WWI campaign.’
Alison Ronan (Manchester Metropolitan University), ‘The Manchester No-Conscription Fellowship Maintenance Committee 1916-1918: Quakers and socialists creating a geographical and symbolic site of resistance.’
Panel 2 (break-out room): Fighting against different fronts
Gabriel Carlyle (writer and peace activist) and Emily Johns (artist), ‘Resisting Empire’s Call: Resistance to the First World War in the Global South and the Fourth World’
Philipp Dehne (St. Joseph’s College, New York), ‘The quest to end neutrality: Lord Robert Cecil’s plan for perpetual peace’
Liisi Esse (University of Tartu, Stanford University) and Aigi Rahi-Tamm (University of Tartu), ‘Pacifism and Resistance to War in Estonia During and After the First World War’
David Murphy (University of Stirling), ‘No More Wars, No More Empires: Pacifism and the birth of anti-colonial discourse in France’
11:00-11:30 Coffee Break
11.30 – 13.00 Plenary Panel (Broderick Hall): Conscientious Objectors
Julian Putkowski, ‘Engagement, Disengagement and Resistance’
Cyril Pearce (University of Leeds) ‘Communities of Resistance – mapping British Conscientious Objectors’.
Lois Bibbings (University of Bristol), ‘Gender Dissidents and Gender Dissidence: Conscientious Objectors, Suffragists and Suffragettes’
Martin Crick, ‘British Socialism and the First World War’
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14.00-15.00 (Broderick Hall)
Nick Hiley (University of Kent) and Chloë Mason, ‘Alice Wheeldon, Internal Security and Justice in Wartime, or in any Time of Terror?’
15.00-15.30: Coffee Break
15.15-16.15
Panel 1 (in break-out room): Haringey and the First World War
Valerie Flessati, Jennifer Bell, Joanna Bornat and John Hinshelwood ‘Haringey men who said No: Conscientious Objection in a London borough: Introducing the work of Haringey First World War Peace Forum.’
Panel 2 (in break-out room): Creative Resistance to War
John Mullen University of Paris East ‘Resisting war priorities in song: a comparison of Britain and France’
Alison Kay Associate Archivist, National Railway Museum (NRM) ‘“Human freight”: The experience of FAU ambulance train men.’
River Wolton and performers, ‘Courage of Conscience’ uncovering and celebrating the stories of Derbyshire WW1 Conscientious Objectors and their families.
15.30-16.15 (Broderick Hall): Film and Q and A: Watford’s quiet heroes
16.30-17.30 (Broderick Hall): ‘Out of the Silence’ performance by Simon Heywood
18.00: end of day
Day 3 Sunday 20th March
9.00-11.00
Panel 1: Cultural Resistance to War I
Thomas Schneider (Erich Maria Remarque Centre, Osnabrück University), ‘”The First Real War Poems”: Reactions of German Pacifist Publishers to World War I, 1914–1918’
Romina Seefried (The University of Passau), ‘Losing the Battle a Second Time: Alexander Moritz Frey’s Literary Resistance to the Great War and Hitler’s Self-Conception’
Stephan Resch (The University of Auckland), ‘Stefan Zweig in Swiss exile: Escapism or Resistance to War?’
Peter Van den Dungen (University of Bradford), ‘Frans Masereel’s Visual Condemnation of War & Militarism (1915-1920)’
Panel 2: Classics and Resistance
Chair: Professor Angie Hobbs (University of Sheffield), ‘Introduction on Classics in WW1’
Professor Lorna Hardwick (Open University), ‘The poetics of slippery concepts: WW1 receptions of ancient peace, power and struggle’
Dr Elizabeth Pender (University of Leeds), ‘Hellenic Idealism: from Gilbert Murray to the Union of Democratic Control’
Professor Miranda Hickman (McGill University), ‘Iphigenia and ‘The Sight of Ships’: H.D.’s Euripidean Resistance to WWI’
Panel 3: Ego documents
Christa Hämmerle (University of Vienna), ‘Concepts of Peace in Ego-Documents of Austrian Women and Women’s Journals (1914- 1918/1919)
Snezhana Dimitrova (South-West University ‘Neophyt Rilsky’, Blagoevgrad), ‘Bulgarian Great War: Diseases, Death, and World of “Drabness and Marginality” (1915-1918)’
Ingrid Hanson (University of Hull), ‘“True lovers of their land!”: The Socialist Imaginary and the Private Language of Conscientious Objection’
Angelique Leszczawski-Schwerk (Dresden University of Technology), ‘Emotional Resistance to War – The Diary of Magdalena (Webersfeld) Bylczynska (1914-1917)’
11:00- 11.30 Coffee Break
11.30-13.30
Panel 4: Military Occupations and Resistance to War, 1914-1924
Emmanuel Debruyne (Paris Institute for Advanced Studies), ‘Resisting Resistance: the German Secret Police in Occupied Belgium and France’
Tammy Proctor (Utah State University), ‘American Neutrality and the Urge to Resist in Belgium and Northern France’
James Connelly ‘Mightier than the Sword? Notable Protests in the Occupied Nord, 1914-1918.’
Panel 5: Cultural resistance to War II
Clive Barrett (University of Leeds), ‘“Once for Every Man and Nation” – Songs of War Resistance, 1914-1918.’
Donna Coates (University of Calgary), ‘Reading Issues of National Identity through Peaceful Canadian and Belligerent Australian Women’s Great War Fictions.’
Mary K Laurents (University of Maryland), ‘The Fracture of Upper Class Collective Identity as an Expression of Resistance and the Development of Upper Class Resistance Identities in Britain – 1914- 1918’
Panel 6: Legacies and Commemoration of Resistance
Marc Calvini-Lefebvre (Aix-Marseille University), ‘From Greenham to the Hague and on to Kabul: what place for history in feminist resistance to war?’
Daniel Prosterman (Salem College), ‘”To Ensure a Permanent and Universal Pacification”: The Great War and the Forging of a Global Anti-Nuclear Movement’
Wendy Chmielewski (George R. Cooley Curator, Swarthmore College Peace Collection)’Resources for researching Opposition to WW1’
13.30-14.30 Lunch
14.30-16.30
Plenary Panel: War Trauma and Shellshock
Carol Acton (University of Waterloo), ‘”They make a wilderness and call it peace”: Storm Jameson, Irene Rathbone and the female gaze on post-war suffering.’
Elizabeth Benjamin (Université de Lorraine), ‘The Surgeon and the Photographer: the Transplantation of Trauma and the Reappropriation of Resistance’
Nick Mansfield (University of Central Lancashire), ‘Feigned illness, self harm and suicide in the British army; a long established tradition of resistance’
Jessica Meyer (University of Leeds), ‘”There really was such a thing as shell shock”: Reconsidering psychological trauma as resistance to war’
16.30-17.00 Conference Close