Gender & History calls for article abstracts for a special issue addressing ‘Gender and Global Warfare in the Twentieth Century’.

Although the occasion for this special issue is the centenary of the First World War, we are interested in contributions that provide a gendered analysis of modern warfare across the globe and throughout the twentieth century, as well as articles relating to the First World War era in particular. Scholarly contributions to the literature on gender and war are usually restricted to a specific war
in a specific place, but the memory and trauma of past wars shape
the politics, cultures and societies in post-war periods and create the
basis on which future wars are waged, experienced or perceived.

We welcome papers that consider these connections by exploring the gendered implications of global warfare, and also papers that connect the First World war era with subsequent wars. We encourage potential contributors to consider larger questions of how gender analysis challenges or changes some of the categories that routinely inform war studies. We offer the following themes and questions as examples and guidelines only; papers that address other issues not listed here are also very welcome:
Gendering Engagement and Resistance
-What have been the most significant variations or changes in the gender dimensions of military engagement over the course of the 20th century?
- What is the gendered significance of resistance? How did ‘Europe’s World War’ reverberate beyond Europe’s borders as a gendered experience?

Sexuality and Violence
- How have the wars of the twentieth century reshaped the concepts of masculinity and femininity?
- How did the violence of the First World War era shape the gendering of violence in later wars?
- Are there gendered differences in the connection between the atrocities and slaughter of war and those committed as acts of genocide?
- How did the expansion of new technologies of killing impact gender and war during the course of the twentieth century?

Politics and Culture
- How have wars altered postwar gender relations across the twentieth century? Does war ‘benefit’ women in the post-war recovery? How are post-war gender norms affected by the experience of war?
- How is the literature, music, or art composed in wartime gendered and what are the social implications of such gendering?
- How have the arts of the First World War era influenced the production of literature, music and art in the post-war world and also artistic creations during subsequent wars?

Memory and Trauma
- How has the gendering of trauma changed over time and space?
- How are memories of twentieth-century wars experienced in different parts of the globe?
What is the gendered significance of how the First World War is currently being commemorated in different areas of the globe?
- How are war archives gendered and how has that affected the gendered histories of war?

Health Practices and Medicine
- What does a gendered analysis of wartime health practice and medicine suggest about the way medical innovation occurs?
- How has the First World War affected the gendering of medicine in subsequent wars?
- What were the gendered aspects of the spread of the communicable diseases that circulated in wartime during the twentieth century?
- How has managing wartime disabilities impacted men and women differently in the post war years?

Ideologies of War
- How is the language of war gendered and how is that gendering specific to a particular time or place? How has the First World War influenced the language of war elsewhere?
- How has the gendering of war propaganda changed over time? Over space?
- How do ideas of ‘race’ and cultural differences intersect with gender norms and expectations (e.g. presumptions of ‘warlike races’ and common tropes of women as symbols of peace) to prompt or justify wars?

The production of the special issue will follow a symposium, to be held at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in late April or early May 2015 (date to be announced), whose participants will be selected on the basis of the abstracts submitted.

Please submit 1-2 page abstracts in English (500-750 words maximum) to gendhist@umn.edu by October 1, 2014, with ‘Special Issue 28:3 abstract submission’ in the subject line (limited funds for the translation of articles written in other languages might be available). Invitations to present at the symposium will be issued in November 2014. Papers must be submitted for pre-circulation to the editors by March 30, 2015. After the symposium the editors will select papers to be considered for publication, and revised versions of selected papers must be received by September 1, 2015. Manuscripts will then immediately enter the peer-review process so that the editors can produce the issue by May 2016 for publication in November 2016.