J.M. Winter, in The Great War and British People (1985), claimed that no study
of the First World War would be complete that failed to take into account the
literary legacy of the war. This legacy, particularly the works of the soldier
poets, has shaped the memory of the war over the past nine decades. In recent
years, academic discussion of the literary culture of the First World War has
expanded to include not only such poets and novelists writing during the war,
but also other more popular cultural forms created both during the war and in
the years since. From trench journals to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, from
Dorothy L. Sayers to Blackadder, from Sebastian Faulks to Aces High, Anglophone
culture has responded to the war in a variety of ways which have become sources
for both historians and cultural critics interested in the study of the war and
its aftermath.
This conference will bring together scholars working on all aspects of the
popular culture of the First World War to investigate both the ways in which
the war shaped popular culture and the ways in which the memory of war was
shaped in turn. We are particularly interested in providing an
interdisciplinary forum for cultural historians and literary and film scholars.
These disciplines have created substantial bodies of knowledge on the subject
of popular culture and the war, often approaching the subject from very
different perspectives. Bringing these and other disciplines together will
allow for a transdisciplinary debate on the role and meaning of popular culture
in our understandings of the First World War and its afterlife in our cultural
imagination.
Keynote Speakers
Margaret Higonnet (Connecticut)
Angela Smith (Plymouth)
Trudi Tate (Cambridge)
Jay Winter (Yale)