2nd Annual Rethinking War Virtual Conference

Following a highly successful conference last spring, the Rethinking War Conference is eager to continue the interdisciplinary study of war that incorporates multiple voices, narrative, and frames of analysis. This conference welcomes presentations and works-in-progress from scholars and students of all levels, including undergraduates, public historians, museum professionals, veterans, and military professionals.

The Rethinking War Conference continues to believe that the work of recovering, constructing, and sharing narratives in an inherently political one. This is especially true regarding discussions of state-sanctioned and organized violence. Multiple frameworks, disciplinary perspectives, and forms of expression are required to grasp such experiences fully and consequentially. More importantly is the act of recognizing the voices, knowledges, and insight of students and scholars from a diverse range of identities and experiences. This conference welcomes inclusive examinations of war that query notions of periodization, power, and relationships with and to violence. Further, we seek to challenge traditional binaries of war/peace, veteran/civilian, home-front/battlefield, and digital/tangible sites of war as a way of querying the nature of war itself as part of the human experience.

This event is intended as a forum for sharing research and, hopefully, as a tool for building a supportive community of scholars and encouraging collaboration. In order to facilitate these goals, presentations should be no more than 15 minutes.

Some suggested topics for papers include, but are by no means limited to:

• What it means to ‘decolonize,’ ‘re-center,’ or ‘reconceptualize’ the history of war and conflict
• The role of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, sexuality, and identity in discussions of war, conflict, and peace studies
• The effects of war on the lived and natural environment
• The rhetoric of war and violence (ex: “The War on Drugs” or militaristic narratives in public health)
• The intersections of health, medicine, and bioethics in times of conflict
• Digital warfare, and the use of technology in warfare
• The study, treatment and theorization of trauma
• Media representations and artistic depictions of trauma
• Issues of collective memory, post-memory, and memorialization of war, conflict, and violence
• Innovative pedagogies of military history, war studies, and other fields
• The effects of victory and defeat on culture, society, and national narratives
• Gendered violence, hate crimes, and crimes against humanity
• The role of veterans, especially among those whose veteran status has been historically challenged or ignored
• The politics of war, insurrection, and violence in society and memory

Please submit a proposal of no more than 250 words at RethinkingWar.com by March 4, 2023. Proposals will be accepted for individual papers, as well as for non-traditional forms of presentations. We also welcome expressions of interest from those who are interested in attending the conference without participating. Please direct any questions to Dr. Bridget Keown at keown.b@pitt.edu.