The Conflict and Culture Study Group

The Conflict and Culture Study Group is a research group based in the School of Modern Languages. The group exists in order to examine a range of cultural responses to, and representations of, conflict within those cultures represented and studied in the School. It understands conflict in its broadest sense, aiming to examine not only civil and international conflict, but also social, and ideological conflict and other related issues. It provides a platform for researchers, both established and postgraduate, to refine their contribution to their individual discipline within the broader context of the group’s interdisciplinarity.

The group’s activities therefore include the promotion of research seminars, public lectures, symposia and conferences along with postgraduate research and teaching. To this end, an annual symposium is held in Bristol in conjunction with the Group for War and Culture Studies (GWACS), which has a regional centre in Bristol. Members of the group are also involved in delivering the MA Modern Languages: War and Culture Pathway based in the School of Modern Languages. For more details of this, please visit the School web pages.

The group always welcomes new members and plans to extend beyond its current base in the School of Modern Languages in years to come. Should you be interested in the group’s activities, please contact Dr Martin Hurcombe.

Forthcoming Events

Several members of the group are involved in the 2008-09 BIRTHA Research Programme operating under the title ‘Traces of Conflict’ and involving colleagues from across the Faculty of Arts and the Department of Politics. This programme aims to shift the focus of memory and conflict studies onto the cultural, mental and physical traces of conflict. By focusing on traces of conflict rather than the forms in which conflicts are remembered the team aims to create a more dynamic dialogue between the present and the past, but also between present, past and future.

Details of coming events  are as follows:

Wednesday 29th April Workshop 3: Remnants of Conflict, Link Room 2, 3-5 Woodland Road
Confirmed speakers:

Bill Rolston (University of Ulster): ‘Political murals in Northern Ireland: past, present … and future’

John Schofield: (English Heritage): ‘Symmetrical Archaeology and the Traces of Conflict’.

Bill Niven (NottinghamTrentUniversity): "Traces of Crime, Traces of Memory: The Relationship of Memorials to History"

Nuala Johnson (Queen’s University Belfast): ‘Tracing Conflict in Omagh: the ‘Garden of Light’ Project and the Politics of Inscription’

Followed by screening of Cood bay Forst Zinna,presented by Angus Boulton.

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Previous Events

Tue. 24th March 2009: ‘Scars'  a one-day symposium

Confirmed speakers:

Gilly Carr (University of Cambridge): 'Scars of honour, scars of shame: differing attitudes towards the German Occupation in the Channel Islands, 1945-2009'

Phil Dine (National University of Ireland, Galway): ‘Remembering the footballer(s) of the revolution: Franco-Algerian sporting encounters from Mekloufi to Zidane’

Mike O’Mahony (University of Bristol): Body perfect – body imperfect: Yuri Pimenov’s Disabled War Veterans (1926) and the Soviet New Person (novyi chelovek)

Louise Purbrick (University of Brighton): The last days of Long Kesh/Maze, Northern Ireland: the materiality of a political architecture.

John Flower (University of Kent): 'The words remain: Modiano and others...'

Helen Vassallo (University of Exeter): ‘Traces of trauma: The Algerian War as embodied memory in Nina Bouraoui and Leïla Sebbar’

Simon Kitson (University of London in Paris): 'Death and liberation: The allied bombing of occupied France'

Paul Gough (UWE): ‘Best we forget?’: construction, reconstruction and re-enactment on battlefields of the British Empire.

Thursday 12 March 2009: Workshop 2: Gendered Perpetration, 4-6pm, LR8, 21 Woodland Road
Confirmed Speakers:

Victoria Basham (Bristol): ‘Bad Apples or Bad Barrels? Discourses of Gender and Victimhood in Responses to Torture in the British Army’

Ruth Glynn (Bristol): 'Women, perpetration, trauma: some theoretical problems'

Miranda Alison (Warwick): 'If women are combatants, do we still need women peacemakers?'

Paul Higate (Bristol): ‘Entrepreneurs in violence? Men, masculinities and private mlitary security companies’

Further information is available from Ruth Glynn, R.S.Glynn@bristol.ac.uk

6th November 2008: Inaugural Lecture by Prof Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck College),  ‘The Things They Left Behind: Materiality and the Body of Trauma in Modern Warfare’

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12th November 2008: Workshop 1: War within War.

23rd April 2008: Visions of Defeat, a one-day symposium.

5th March 2008: ‘Languages at War: Preparing for the Liberation of Western Europe, 1944-45’, Hilary Footitt (University of Reading)

20th February 2008: ‘Linguistic Conflicts, LinguisticTerritories’, a workshop.

21st November 2007: ‘Conflict, Territory and Culture’, a workshop.

17th-19th July 2006: War Without Limits: Spain, 1936-39 and Beyond, a three-day conference in association with the Group for War and Culture Studies, BIRTHA and the British Academy.     

19th January 2005: ‘Heroines and Harlots: French Women and the First World War’, Alison Fell (University of Lancaster).

21st April 2004: The Great War Reconsidered, a one-day interdisciplinary symposium in association with the Group for War and Culture Studies.

 

 

Contacts/Members in School of Modern Languages

Associate Members

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