[ecrea] World War I Media, Entertainments & Popular Culture

Please see the attached announcement for the two day conferences World 
War 1: Media, Entertainments & Popular Culture. To take place between 
2nd and 3rd July 2015, People’s History Museum, Manchester, UK, 
organised by, University of Chester, University of Salford, UCLAN, 
Manchester Metropolitan University, People’s History Museum.



Email: contact - Chris Hart (c.hart /at/ chester.ac.uk)

URR: www.ww1.midrash.co.uk (under construction)

The Call (bier version)



The scope : this conference aims to bring together scholars from a wide 
range of disciplines to examine and discuss both contemporary and 
subsequent accounts, interpretations and uses of the First World War in 
terms of mass and popular media and entertainments.



We are inviting proposals for papers on any aspect of the Media, 
Entertainments and Popular Culture during and after the First World War. 
Possible themes include,



Photography, films, newsreels

WWI celebrities?

Contemporaneous press reportage?

Wartime censorship?

Oppositional/dissenting voices?

Music hall performers?

Wartime images?

The popular press and WWI?

Wartime and cultural memory ?

Popular music

Sports

Pubs and clubs ?

The war in popular fiction?

Cartoons, Posters

Post 1918 popular uses of World War I themes.



The Call (longer version)



Four universities and the People’s History Museum, Manchester, have come 
together to stage this conference and related events.



This conference has two main themes. The first is popular mass 
entertainments (e.g. singers, music, magazines, sport) that emerged as 
the war progressed. The second is the ways in which the war furnished 
the reference for subsequent popular mass consumed productions (e.g. The 
Big Parade, 1925, War Horse, 2011).



This conference is not about the trivial nor does it seek to trivialize. 
We expect there to be many events marking the start and key landmark 
events of the First World War, as is right and proper. Remembrance of 
the politics, battles, technologies and unimaginable sufferings should 
never be forgotten.



Whether civilian or serviceman or servicewoman popular mass 
entertainments had a part to play in their lives. This conference, 
therefore, does not aim to examine artistic production during and 
immediately after the war. Works by artists such as Gertler, Wadsworth, 
Wyllie, Bone, Lewis and Munnings, and many others, may have been popular 
amongst some sections of society and have become the stock knowledge for 
scholarship but they did not attract a mass audience. Along with 
contemporary sculpture, poetry and opera they remain the preserve of a 
minority, and are relatively unknown to the masses. There are exceptions 
such as McCrea’s ‘In Flanders Fields’ and possibly a few poems by Owens 
and Sassoon.



This conference is about the relationship between popular and mass 
entertainments during the war and the use of the war for subsequent mass 
audience productions. It aims to examine the role, form and development 
of entertainments created during and related to it post-1918. The music 
hall, the singers, performers, the cartoons, romantic novels, and cinema 
all had a place and role to contemporaries. By 1915 many of these may 
have relayed the experience of war and some provided the means to 
maintain morale and patriotism. Not all, however, supported the war. 
After one year of war initial optimism was confronted with the 
realization that this war was different to others. The number of wounded 
and killed was shockingly high. English coastal towns were bombarded by 
German battleships, whilst other cities were bombed from German airships.



Given the reality of the war the kinds of questions we have include the 
following. How did popular entertainments react to the war? What were 
the dynamics, politics and reception of different positions? In what 
ways did the form of mass entertainments change as the war progressed? 
What role did technology have in disseminating entertainments? How did 
commercial entertainment enterprises use the war to attract audiences? 
What differences and conflicts emerged between regions, classes and 
genders?



In addition to those who lived during the war we also want to examine 
and discuss how subsequent generations became audiences for 
entertainments based about the war. Cinema films such as The Big Parade 
(1925), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Farewell to Arms 
(1932) have become stock sources for film studies. But how did the 
messages and imagery they convey attract mass audiences? In what ways 
are mass entertainments during the war portrayed in post 1918 films, 
fiction and television? In what sense and why is the war experience 
shown as sadness, regret and ruling class stupidity? How do current 
generations understand the war through recent mass entertainments (e.g. 
Downton Abbey, The War Horse)?



The complexity and dynamics of historical and contemporary 
methodological issues relating to mass popular entertainments during the 
war and since 1918 are challenging.



Bringing the conference to the general public



Ironically our interest is academic and may not have mass appeal. The 
potential of this topic, therefore, places an emphasis to bring what we 
have to say to the widest possible audience. In the weeks leading up to 
the conference we intend to have an exhibition in the museum and at 
other locations around Manchester as well as on a web site of the 
phenomena we will be discussing at the conference. These will include 
the performance of songs, music, and films.



Abstract



Please email a 300 word abstract (stating your name, email address and 
institutional affiliation) to: (c.hart /at/ chester.ac.uk).



Outputs



A book of selected papers from the conference titled,

World War I: Media, Entertainments & Popular Culture. This will be a 
companion volume to our book World War II and the Media (2014).



A dedicated edition of Media, War & Conflict (Sage Publications).



Exhibition and performances leading up to and during the conference at 
the People’s History Museum. We hope you can suggest materials (songs, 
film, photographs) to be included.



Organising Committee



Chris Hart (c.hart /at/ chester.ac.uk)

Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova (v.petkova /at/ chester.ac.uk)

Craig Horner (C.Horner /at/ mmu.ac.uk)

Carole O'Reilly (c.oreilly /at/ salford.ac.uk)

Jim Aulich (J.Aulich /at/ mmu.ac.uk)

Nick Mansfield (NMansfield1 /at/ uclan.ac.uk)

Gaynor Bagnall (g.bagnall /at/ salford.ac.uk)

Chris Lee (c.lee /at/ salford.ac.uk)



Address for correspondence



Dr Chris Hart

Department of Media

Warrington Campus

Faculty of Media and Performing Arts

University of Chester, England

WA2 ODB


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