The First World War: Literature, Culture, Modernity

Convenors: Dr Santanu Das, King’s College London, and Dr Kate McLoughlin, University of Oxford

A hundred years after the war’s outbreak, this conference brings together some of the world’s leading experts and emerging scholars to reassess its literary and cultural impact and explore its vexed relationship to modernity. Was the war a ‘crack in the table of history’ or did it reinforce deep continuities? What is the relationship between artistic form and historical violence, and between combatant and civilian creative responses? What are the colonial and transnational dimensions of First World War literature? Spanning across literature, the visual arts and music, the conference will adopt an international perspective as it investigates the war’s continuing legacies.

Speakers include:
Professor Fran Brearton, Queen’s University, Belfast
Profesor Geert Guelens, University of Utrecht
Professor Sarah Cole, Columbia University
Professor Laura Doan, University of Manchester
Professor Ann-Marie Einhaus, University of Northumbria
Professor Sandra Gilbert, University of California, Davis
Professor Tim Kendall, University of Exeter
Professor Margaret Higonnet, University of Connecticut (Storrs)
Dr Britta Lange, University of Bonn
Professor Dame Hermione Lee FBA, University of Oxford
Professor Angela Leighton FBA, University of Cambridge
Professor Edna Longley FBA, Queen’s University, Belfast
Professor Laura Marcus FBA, University of Oxford
Dr Jane Potter, Oxford Brookes University
Professor Jahan Ramazani, University of Virginia
Dr Eugene Rogan, University of Oxford
Professor Max Saunders, King’s College London
Professor Vincent Sherry, University of Washington, St Louis
Dr Hope Wolf, University of Cambridge