One of the most significant aspects of recent historiographical work on war has been the attention paid to the cultural representations of conflict: the visual representation of war and its memory, language and rhetoric. This historiographical approach towards the subject of war has brought new attention to ways of representing war and the languages used to recount it. The First World War is usually seen as marking a new era; the unusual nature of the violence of this conflict, with the “disappearance of battle” and the mechanization of death, signalling the end of war as a place for generating men’s honour. But other moments in the history of western culture have seen the paradigm of war change in the accounts and narratives of contemporaries. Among these, the period of the Italian Wars of the sixteenth century, when the image of war transformed from a theatre of conflict between chivalric heroes to the anonymous encounters of armies.

Presentation :

The aim of the conference is to promote a discussion about when and in what form the western paradigm of war as generative of individual and collective valour declined. This means turning our attention to discourses and narratives concerning:

1. War as a foundational myth of political communities
2. Celebrations of war as ritual spaces for the sacralisation of social order
3. War as a theatre for the elaboration of relations between the individual, gender and political identity

Program :

Thursday, May 24th

14:30 Wecome and introduction

• Paolo Pombeni (Director FBK- Isig)
• Marco Mondini (FBK- Isig) – Massimo Rospocher (FBK- Isig)

15:00 – 18:30

Panel I: Narratives and accounts of war

Discussant: Piero Del Negro (Padova)

• Jean-Louis Fournel (Paris VIII) : La langue de la guerre
• Lauro Martines (UCLA): On describing wartime atrocities
• Jay Winter (Yale): Language, rhetoric and memory: cultural divergences in narration of war

• Carine Trevisan (Paris VII – Diderot) : Entrer en guerre, sortir de la guerre
• Christa Haemmerle (Wien): The great war in first person, writings of Austrian women
• Gustavo Corni (Trento): The Italian campaign in Russia: literature and memories

Friday, May 25th

9:30 – 13:00

Panel II: Words and media: war and print culture

Discussant: Nicola Labanca (Siena)

• Vincenzo Lavenia (Macerata): In God’s fields. Military chaplains and soldiers in the Flanders
  
• Krystina Shaw (Swansea): Wartime propaganda during Charles VIII's expedition to Italy in 1494-1495
• Pierre Purseigle (Birmingham): Sacrifice and citizenship in the first world war. Transformations of warfare and redefinition of the political order

• Heather Jones (LSE): Contesting post war enmity? The propaganda war over the allied blockade of Germany 1914-1919
• Victor Demiaux (EHESS) : La communauté interalliée pendant la grande guerre: enjeux et limites d'un discours public
• Oliver Janz (Freie Universität Berlin): 1914-18 Online. International encyclopedia of the first world war. Outline of a current project

14:30 – 18:00

Panel III: Order within chaos: the visual representation of war

Discussant: Alberto Banti (Pisa)

• Kristine Stermole (Venice): Venetian Art and the war of the league of Cambrai
• Roberto Bianchi (Firenze) : La Grande Guerre dans les bandes dessinées entre Italie et France
• Nicola Spagnolli (Verona): Memory about war in Italian and German comics

• Nicola Labanca (Siena): Italian war memorials after two world wars
  
• Ruth Ben-Ghiat (NYU): The spectre of loss in fascist world war two cinema
• Joëlle Beurier (Paris) : Corps national et émotions individuelles : les années 60 et la guerre froide

Final Discussion

Concept :

• Marco Mondini (FBK-Isig)
• Massimo Rospocher (FBK-Isig)

Information:

• Elisabetta Lopane
• Antonella Vecchio

Tel :+39 0461 210 215-265
e-mail: info-studistorici@fbk.eu