Cultures and Commemorations of War: American Wars, American Memory

A one-day interdisciplinary workshop considering the distinctively American practices and politics of war

Funded by the British Association of American Studies and the US Embassy

Free and open to all, including lunch, coffee and a wine reception. Please register here and join us!

Schedule

10.30: Participants arrive (coffee)

10.45-12.45: Postgraduate and ECR Morning Seminar on Live Commemoration:

Kristin O’Donnell (Brighton) - “History might as well be water, chastising this shore”: Disappearing Sites of Memory in Danny Boyle’s Pages of the Sea
Jan Tattenberg (Oxford) - Germans at the Cenotaph! Nationalism on the Armistice Centenary
Dr. Layla Renshaw (Kingston) - Materializing Migrant Death: Memorial Practices as Forms of Contemporary Protest

12.45-1.45pm: Lunch

1.45-2pm: Brief Introduction to the Series - Dr. Alice Kelly

2-3.30pm: Roundtable on American War Memory (Chair: Dr Ashley Garber)

Professor Robert Cook (Sussex) - Union Veterans and the Fading Struggle to Remember the War of the Rebellion
Professor John Horne (Trinity College Dublin) - Remembering America's Great War a Hundred Years On: the Pershing Park Project
Dr Sam Edwards (Manchester Metropolitan) - World War II and American Memory Diplomacy

3.30-4pm: Coffee

4-5.30pm: Keynote: Dr. Sarah Wagner (George Washington) - Bringing Them Home: The Politics and Symbolics of MIA Accounting
(Chair: Dr Layla Renshaw)

5.30-6.30pm: Wine Reception

CultCommWar (@CultCommWar) is an interdisciplinary seminar series which considers the practices and politics of war memory across time. You can read more about the series on the British Academy website and the Oxford Arts blog, and in this Times Higher Education article about how the series has sought to champion emerging and early career scholars.