CFP: Behind the Lines: Women, War and Letters 1880-1920
UNIVERSITY OF LIMERICK, IRELAND
9th & 10th June 2012
PLENARY SPEAKERS
Professor Lucy McDiarmid (Montclair State University)
Professor Matthew Campbell (University of York)
Proposals are invited for a two-day literary conference titled “Behind the Lines:
Women, War and Letters 1880-1920”, organised as part of a research cluster
within the University of Limerick and NUI Galway Gender ARC. The conference
will be held at the University of Limerick.
The aim of this conference is to interrogate the literary tropes and political
constructions through which women’s writing conceptualises conflict. In Ireland,
to engage with national politics and national conflicts in the period between the
Land War and partition was to find oneself grappling with gendered norms and
expectations, through which distinctive modes of patriotic action could be
validated or naturalised, but also re-interpreted or condemned. At the same time,
in an international context, imperial and colonial conflicts of the late nineteenthcentury opened up new conceptions of space and national identity, while in the
early twentieth century the First World War produced a sustained literary reevaluation of cultures of militarisms and masculinity. These political events were,
however, taking place alongside a series of other conflicts, conflicts centred
around disruptions of norms of gendered behaviour and class alignments, as well
as disruptions of literary norms with the rise of Modernism. What meanings
accrue to these colliding agendas, needs, and practices? How can we discover
them?
Papers may address, but are not limited to:
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Gender and conflict in literature
Women’s nation-building narratives
Imperial femininities in literature, life-writing, travel writing, and/or
epistolary writing.
Genre and conflict
Literary representations of women soldiers and non-combatants in conflict
zones
Pacifism and conflict resolution in women’s writing
Sexualities in war narratives
Feminism and war
Literature as portable heritage: memorialising and commemorating
national conflicts
Literary constructions of memory and trauma in the context of national
struggle
Transnational solidarity in women’s war writing
Proposals of approx. 250 words should be sent to Yvonne.OKeeffe@ul.ie
by 31st March 2012. Conference organisers: Professor Margaret Mills Harper
(UL), Dr. Tina O’Toole (UL), Dr. Muireann O Cinneide (NUIG).