Archive for February 2014

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

Thu Feb 13 10:26:50 GMT 2014




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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