Royal Museums, Greenwich and Gateways to the First World War
Call for Papers:
The First World War at Sea: Conflict, Culture and Commemoration
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
8-10 November 2018
This conference will explore the First World War at sea through wide-ranging themes designed to provide a forum for interdisciplinary research and new perspectives on the subject. Focused on both the Royal Navy and the merchant marine, the conference will also place the experience of the maritime war within the historical context of the years preceding and following the conflict.
Social history:
• The human experience of maritime conflict
• Explorations of the war at sea from perspectives of class, rank, race, age, gender or sexuality
• Explorations of the war at sea from imperial and global
Operational history:
• The ‘undramatic’ duties of naval warfare: blockade, minelaying, reconnaissance, trade protection, power projection
• The navy’s wartime roles around the globe
• The wartime duties of the merchant marine
• Technology and the war at sea
Institutional history:
• The wartime training of naval officers and ratings
• The impact of war on naval hierarchies and ideas of leadership
• Institutional lessons learned, and the RN in the Second World War
• The impact of the war on the merchant marine
Cultural history:
• Public opinion and media coverage relating to the navy/merchant marine before, during and after the conflict
• Cultural constructions of maritime heroism, and their relationship to pre-war touchstones, from Nelson to Scott
Memory and commemoration:
• Remembering the war at sea: memorials, memoirs and material culture
• Family history and the legacy of maritime war
• Restoring the naval heroic: cinema, novels, pageants and museums
• Themes, events and people that commemoration left unremembered
Please submit proposals of 300 words for individual papers, along with a short CV to research@rmg.co.uk
We welcome submissions from academics, local historians and community group projects. Call for papers deadline: 1 January 2018
This conference is held in partnership with Gateways to the First World War, an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded centre for public engagement with the First World War Centenary.
