CFP: War, Memory, and Gender: An Interdisciplinary Conference
Location: Mobile, Alabama
Conference Date: March 27-29, 2014
Deadline for Proposals: October 15, 2013

The past several decades have seen an explosion of scholarly interest in the subject of war and gender. At the same time, the study of collective or cultural memory, especially in connection with armed conflict, has become a veritable cottage industry. This conference seeks to bring these two areas of intensive study into dialogue with each other, exploring the complex ways in which gender shapes war memory and war memory shapes gender. Comprised of a select number of presentations (so that all participants will be able to hear every paper), together with a keynote address by Professor Jennifer Haytock (SUNY-Brockport) and a panel discussion featuring women military veterans, the conference will address multiple conflicts and nationalities from the perspectives of multiple disciplines.

Hosted by the Center for the Study of War and Memory and the Gender Studies Program at the University of South Alabama, “War, Memory, and Gender” will be held in the History Museum of Mobile, a beautiful structure located in the heart of the city’s scenic and historic downtown. Restaurants in the downtown area will host receptions for conference registrants, and a downtown hotel (to be announced) will offer a block of rooms at a reduced rate. Local attractions include Alabama Gulf-Coast beaches, the U.S.S. Alabama Memorial Park on Mobile Bay, the African-American Heritage Trail, the Bellingrath mansion and gardens, the Blakeley Civil War battlefield, the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, and the charming nearby towns of Daphne and Fairhope.

Interested scholars should email a 350-word proposal, along with a CV, to conference co-directors Martha Jane Brazy (mjbrazy@southalabama.edu) and Steven Trout (strout@southalabama.edu) before October 15, 2013.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

Remembering male and/or female bodies at war
War propaganda and gender
Women and forgotten conflicts
Gender, Race, and War
Women of color and war memory
Sexuality and War
Restoring women to the so-called Greatest Generation
Women and veterans’ organizations
The Vietnam War and the crisis of American masculinity
Remembering women combatants
Women as custodians of war memory
War, gender, and grief
Gender, war, and modernism(s)
Male and female war films
Women writers, male war stories
Medicine, war, and gender
LGBTQ memories of war
Trauma and gendered memory
Women artists/architects and public war memorials
Gender and military video games
Gender and historical writing about war
Gender and war reenactment