CALL FOR PAPERS: The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Battlefields, and the commemoration of the Great War
A conference for PhD students and early career researchers
2017 marks the centenary of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, a body instigated to provide a common focal point for commemoration across the Empire. Led by the remarkable Sir Fabian Ware, a man driven by a vision of imperial collaboration, the Commission took responsibility for a global project for the permanent commemoration of the dead. However, at the same time, communities and individuals across the Empire were searching for ways of expressing their own grief and pride and balancing concepts of local, national and supra-national imperial identity in their memorial schemes for the battlefields.
The Centre for War, Propaganda and Society (School of History, University of Kent) and Gateways to the First World War (AHRC-funded World War One Engagement Centre, University of Kent) are hosting a conference for PhD students and Early Career Researchers in the CWGC’s centenary year to explore its work and legacies.
The conference will be held on the Canterbury campus at the University of Kent, 4-6 September 2017.
We are keen to explore the role of the Commission in its wider imperial context and to see how its work sits with other commemorative schemes and impulses. Themes include (but not confined to) issues of identities (including class, race, and gender), horticultural and architectural treatment, mourning and grief, landscape and space, belonging and ownership, tourism and pilgrimage, interaction between visitors and the communities occupying the zones around the cemeteries and memorials, different uses and interpretations of the cemeteries and memorials, comparisons with other commemoration schemes, on-going role of the CWGC and its future.
Proposals for papers of no longer than 25 minutes in length, and all other queries, should be sent to: Eileen Hartney (E.Hartney-204@kent.ac.uk).
Closing date for proposals [no more than 350 words]: 8 June 2017
