News
06.03.08
Book announcement:
Martin Conway and Peter Romijn (editors);
The War for Legitimacy in Politics and Culture, 1936-1946
01.03.08
CALL FOR PAPERS
International Conference
East-Central Europe in the Cold War, 1945–1989
Warsaw, 16–18 October 2008
for Registration:
registration form pdf
registration form doc
For almost half a century the Cold War conflict shaped international relations and to a large extent influenced the history of individual nations. The Cold War was a global conflict, but in a particular manner was also a European conflict. The beginning and end of the Cold War (at least the beginning of its end) took place in Central Europe. For several dozen years Europeans on either side of the Iron Curtain prepared themselves for a potential apocalyptic conflict, or sought to prevent one from occurring. These preparations and preventative measures, to a hitherto insufficiently recognized degree, influenced their histories.
Thanks to the ‘archival revolution’, which began in the 1990s in the wake of the opening of communist-era archives, our knowledge about the Cold War, and its influence on the countries of East-Central Europe and their roles in this conflict in particular, has greatly increased. Numerous topics, once the domain of pure speculation, can today be presented as grounded in primary sources. The aim of the conference is to present the newest studies and enable discussion among leading specialists from different countries.
The conference organizers:
· The Institute of National Remembrance,
· The Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, acting as a member of the EurhistXX (European Network on Contemporary History), and
· The Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC,
would like to sincerely call for the submission of paper proposals.
The conference languages will be English and Polish with consecutive interpretation provided. The conference program will include seven thematic sessions:
1. Activities of European Soviet Bloc countries towards the West during the Cold War – for example: diplomacy and intelligence operations, Cold War propaganda (directed at their own societies and towards the West), mobilization of societies and psychological warfare, support for western European communist groups, pacifist movements, anti-US attitudes and opponents of European integration, support for terrorist groups, preparation for acts of sabotage in the event of conflict (5-6 papers).
2. Western European countries towards East-Central Europe during the Cold War – for example: diplomacy and intelligence operations, propaganda (directed at their own societies and to the East), mobilization of societies and psychological warfare, utilization of émigrés from East-Central Europe, policy of differentiation and ‘softening’ strategies, attitudes towards dissidents and opposition movements, reactions to crises in the Communist Bloc (5-6 papers).
3. Rifts between the European countries of the Communist Bloc and their exploitation by the West – for example: the Stalin – Tito conflict and attitudes of the Bloc countries towards Yugoslavia, conflict with Albania, Romania’s independent policies, the Prague Spring, variations in the rhythm of changes as a source of mutual distrust, local conflicts, Communist Bloc countries’ attitudes towards Solidarity and Perestroika (4 papers).
4. Countries of East-Central Europe and the Sino-Soviet conflict and other Communist Bloc tensions – for example: efforts to exploit conflict, mediation efforts, conferences organized by Moscow (4 papers).
5. The role of East-Central Europe in Soviet policy towards the Third World – for example: intelligence activities, support for ‘national liberation’ movements and communist groups, economic and military aid, advisors, training, propaganda (5-6 papers).
6. Military aspects of the Cold War – the role of East-Central European countries in the Warsaw Pact and their place in the military plans of the East and West – for example: similarities and differences in the degree of potential engagement of individual armies, nuclear arms in East-Central Europe, scope of economic strain, armament industry and its infrastructure, militarization of society (5-6 papers).
7. Demobilization in Europe after the Cold War – military, economic, political and cultural. This final session will deal with various aspects of demobilization in Western and Eastern Europe following the end of the Cold War, and major consequences of the demobilizations for international and domestic politics of European countries (5 papers). The session is co-sponsored by EurhistXX.
We invite all those interested to participate in the conference – both as speakers and as participants in the discussion. Conference organizers will cover the costs of paper authors – room and board and refund travel expenses (up to 400 Euro for speakers from Europe and up to 1000 Euro for those outside Europe).
Potential speakers are requested to register (with the appended registration form) before 15 April 2008. Speakers are requested to additionally include with their questionnaire an abstract of their paper (max. 500 words) in English or Polish.
The conference will be open to the public. There is no mandatory conference fee. However, those registered participants who choose to pay a 200 PLN (55 EUR) conference fee will receive an invitation to a formal dinner, 3 mid-day meals and full conference materials. Instructions regarding the payment of the conference fee will follow at a later date.
Please e-mail your registration form to:
anna.piekarska@ipn.gov.pl
or send it to the following address:
Ms. Anna Piekarska
Instytut Pamieci Narodowej
Biuro Edukacji Publicznej
ul. Towarowa 28
00-839 Warszawa, Poland
“Conference 2008”
fax: +48.22.431.83.80
For additional information, contact:
Anna Piekarska – anna.piekarska@ipn.gov.pl or visit http://www.ipn.gov.pl
26.02.08
Rape in Wartime: A History to be Written
Call for papers
International conference
University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
11-12 May 2009
Rapes committed during armed conflicts are often assumed to have a kind of inevitability. Even the term in French, viols de guerre, makes them seem an intrinsic part of war in any period. For a long time the victims, for the most part women and civilians, were accorded only a secondary importance. They were marginal in relation to the fighting and ranked somewhere between a form of booty and the warrior’s reward. Since they had no effect on the outcome of the war, they figured only in relation to the satisfaction of male sexual needs, albeit in a particularly violent form.
Over the last thirty years, however, the subject has been studied in a number of different disciplines. The aim of this conference is to promote rape in wartime as an historical subject. The intention is not to claim in advance that it constitutes either a supreme form of wartime violence or a forgotten one, but rather, by taking account of the actors, the actions and the occasions on which rape occurred, to pose the question of its place in war. The idea is also to chart the visibility of rape both at the time and afterwards. The question will be posed of how rape could on some occasions symbolize the entire conflict and summarize the atrocities for which the enemy was condemned while on other occasions it was passed over in silence by both the private and the public narratives of the war.
Five themes will be emphasized:
1. The circumstances of war.
Does the nature and incidence of rape depend on whether the war is an international conflict, awar of independence or a civil war? What variations are due to the different phases of the war (invasion, occupation, retreat) and how do they compare with rape in peacetime or periods of domestic disturbance. Is rape more frequent in war only because of the increased opportunity for it – heightened mobility, the expectation of impunity, perceived anonymity – or because it is an integral part of the violence of war and accepted as such by military commands?
2. Customs and practices.
What acts constitute rape and in what circumstances? How do the definitions of rape evolve? What sanctions does it carry? How do these vary between criminal justice and military justice regimes andwithin different jurisdictions – civil, military, national or international? Is it deemed to be criminal behaviour on the part of the soldiers, and is it tolerated or punished? Can it be a form of reprisal, a policy of terror, a tool of ‘ethnic cleansing’ or genocide?
3. The importance of the imaginary.
How do the mutual perceptions of rapists and their victims affect how the violence unfolds? What is the relative importance of masculine and racial domination, or of a desire for revenge? Do the stereotypes projected onto the victim lower the threshold of transgression in committing rape or do they contribute to strategies of self-legitimization by the perpetrators, whether individual or collective?
4. The aftermath.
What happens after rape? What can be said about the physical and psychological consequences, the medical treatment and the legal and social status of the victims (ranging from ostracism to martyrdom)? What about the rapists’ views after the war, their relations with their former victims or the eventual legal consequences of their acts? What is the place of rape in relations between the former belligerent powers, either as states or populations? The fate of the children born of rape appears to be a particularly unexplored topic and warrants our attention.
5. How to write this history.
Finally, we would like this conference to serve as a place of reflection on the relationship of the researcher with her or his subject. How written sources and eyewitnesses are approached, the style of writing and the choice of language - these are all matters that we should discuss collectively, comparing our experiences and engaging in a common epistemological consideration of the nature of the subject.
While the conference will be informed by a series of questions that arise from the history of the20th century, all periods and approaches are welcome.
The languages of the conference are French and English. In order to allow the greatest possible
exchange of views between participants, no more than twenty or so proposals for papers will be selected.
Proposals should be a maximum of 2,500 characters (360 words) and should be sent with a short biographical note before 1 June 2008 to: rapeinwartime@univ-paris1.fr
Organizing committee: Raphaëlle Branche (Centre d’histoire sociale du XXe siècle/CNRS —University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne), Isabelle Delpla (UMR CNRS 5206 Triangle/University of Montpellier III), John Horne (Trinity College Dublin), Pieter Lagrou (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Daniel Palmieri (International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva), Fabrice Virgili (Identités, Relations Internationales et Civilisations de l’Europe/CNRS — University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne).