What makes one turn against and war and into anti-war activism? Do ideologies and/or identities matter?

Essay Question What makes one turn against and war and into anti-war activism? Do ideologies and/or identities matter? Reading list below Topic 11 – Anti-war activism (EM) Every time there has been the threat of a war in the last hundred years, there has been an anti-war movement opposing it. Considering the violent record of the 20th century, it is difficult to know when anti-war activism has been successful. For sure recent popular perceptions after the Iraq war focus on its failures. The lecture for this last week will offer a review of the main academic trends in the study of anti-war activism from the First World War to the Iraq War. Tasks and Questions for Discussion What are the most effective methods and what are the most effective arguments in anti-war? How can we judge whether an anti-war movement is a success or a failure? What makes one turn against and war and into anti-war activism? Do ideologies and/or identities matter? What is your opinion on the British anti-war movement today? Key Reading Martin Ceadel, ‘The Peace Movement: Overview of a British Brand Leader’, International Affairs, 90/2 (2014), 351-365 [attached pdf and in the online library] Daniel Lieberfeld, ‘What makes an effective antiwar movement?, International Journal of Peace Studies, 13/1 (2008), 1-14 [attached pdf and in the online library] David Bromwich, ‘Martin Luther King’s Speech Against the Vietnam War’, antiwar.com (May 16, 2008) [attached doc and freely online] Lawrence Rosenwald, ‘On Modern Western Antiwar Literature’, Raritan, 34/1 (2014), 155-173 [attached pdf and in the online library] David Flores, From Prowar Soldier to Antiwar Activist: Change and Continuity in the Narratives of Political Conversion among Iraq War Veterans, Symbolic Interaction, 39/2 (2016), 196-212 [attached pdf and in the online library] Kevin Gillan, Jenny Pickerill and Frank Webster (eds), ch.3 ‘Representation, Beliefs and Identities’ in Anti-war Activism: New Media and Protest in the Information Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 41-72. [hard copies in class] Further Reading Brock Millman, Managing Domestic Dissent in First World War Britain (2014) Gerard J. Degroot, ‘Aliens, Outlaws, and Dissenters’, in Blighty; British Society in the Era of the Great War (1996), 140-60 Frances H. Early, A world without war: how U.S. feminists and pacifists resisted World War One (1997) Peter Brock and Thomas P. Socknat (eds), Challenge to Mars: essays on pacifism from 1918 to 1945 (1999) Thomas R. Rochon, Mobilizing for Peace: The Antinuclear Movements in Western Europe (1988) Richard Taylor, Against the Bomb: The British Peace Movement 1958-65 (Clarendon P 1988) Richard Taylor & Nigel Young (eds), Campaigns for Peace: British Peace Movements in the Twentieth Century (1987) Barbara Harford, Sarah Hopkins, Greenham Common: women at the wire (1984) John Kippin, Cold War pastoral: Greenham Common (2001) Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (1981) Simon Hall, Rethinking the American Anti-War Movement (2012) J. B. Sears, ‘Peace Work: The Antiwar Tradition in American Labor from the Cold War to the Iraq War’, Diplomatic History, 34/4 (2010) Alex Danchev and John MacMillan, The Iraq War and Democratic Politics (2004) Jenny Teichman, Pacifism and the just war: a study in applied philosophy (1986) L. Rosenwald, ‘On Modern Western Antiwar Literature’, Raritan Quarterly Review, 34/1 (2014) Topic 11 – Anti-war activism (EM) Every time there has been the threat of a war in the last hundred years, there has been an anti-war movement opposing it. Considering the violent record of the 20th century, it is difficult to know when anti-war activism has been successful. For sure recent popular perceptions after the Iraq war focus on its failures. The lecture for this last week will offer a review of the main academic trends in the study of anti-war activism from the First World War to the Iraq War. Tasks and Questions for Discussion What are the most effective methods and what are the most effective arguments in anti-war? How can we judge whether an anti-war movement is a success or a failure? What makes one turn against and war and into anti-war activism? Do ideologies and/or identities matter? What is your opinion on the British anti-war movement today? Key Reading Martin Ceadel, ‘The Peace Movement: Overview of a British Brand Leader’, International Affairs, 90/2 (2014), 351-365 [attached pdf and in the online library] Daniel Lieberfeld, ‘What makes an effective antiwar movement?, International Journal of Peace Studies, 13/1 (2008), 1-14 [attached pdf and in the online library] David Bromwich, ‘Martin Luther King’s Speech Against the Vietnam War’, antiwar.com (May 16, 2008) [attached doc and freely online] Lawrence Rosenwald, ‘On Modern Western Antiwar Literature’, Raritan, 34/1 (2014), 155-173 [attached pdf and in the online library] David Flores, From Prowar Soldier to Antiwar Activist: Change and Continuity in the Narratives of Political Conversion among Iraq War Veterans, Symbolic Interaction, 39/2 (2016), 196-212 [attached pdf and in the online library] Kevin Gillan, Jenny Pickerill and Frank Webster (eds), ch.3 ‘Representation, Beliefs and Identities’ in Anti-war Activism: New Media and Protest in the Information Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 41-72. [hard copies in class] Further Reading Brock Millman, Managing Domestic Dissent in First World War Britain (2014) Gerard J. Degroot, ‘Aliens, Outlaws, and Dissenters’, in Blighty; British Society in the Era of the Great War (1996), 140-60 Frances H. Early, A world without war: how U.S. feminists and pacifists resisted World War One (1997) Peter Brock and Thomas P. Socknat (eds), Challenge to Mars: essays on pacifism from 1918 to 1945 (1999) Thomas R. Rochon, Mobilizing for Peace: The Antinuclear Movements in Western Europe (1988) Richard Taylor, Against the Bomb: The British Peace Movement 1958-65 (Clarendon P 1988) Richard Taylor & Nigel Young (eds), Campaigns for Peace: British Peace Movements in the Twentieth Century (1987) Barbara Harford, Sarah Hopkins, Greenham Common: women at the wire (1984) John Kippin, Cold War pastoral: Greenham Common (2001) Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (1981) Simon Hall, Rethinking the American Anti-War Movement (2012) J. B. Sears, ‘Peace Work: The Antiwar Tradition in American Labor from the Cold War to the Iraq War’, Diplomatic History, 34/4 (2010) Alex Danchev and John MacMillan, The Iraq War and Democratic Politics (2004) Jenny Teichman, Pacifism and the just war: a study in applied philosophy (1986) L. Rosenwald, ‘On Modern Western Antiwar Literature’, Raritan Quarterly Review, 34/1 (2014) Topic 8 – Memory Wars and Amnesia: Eastern Europe (EM) In Eastern Europe the memory battles become more complex. In an area of high ethnic inter-mixing, only recently divided between a plethora of politically unstable nation-states, popular simplistic memory schemes of antifascists resisters versus fascist collaborators often overshadowed infinitely more varied wartime experiences. The arrival of the Cold War froze these underlying memory conflicts for decades. All the more, when these conflicts came to the surface after 1989 they became closely interlinked with the new political struggles that still mar parts of the region until today. Tasks and Questions for Discussion Come to the seminar ready to discuss a memory battle around one Second World War memorial (you can pick any memorial, from Britain or the rest of Europe) Why and how societies tend to formulae and re-formulate their memories of conflict? How did the Cold War affect the memory of the Nazi years in postwar eastern Europe? How does this compare to Western Europe? How has European memory of the second War changed since the end of the Cold War? Should the memory of communism be equated to the memory of fascism? How could we put the two in one memory framework? Key Reading Siobhan Kattago, Memory and Representation in Contemporary Europe: The Persistence of the Past (2012) – especially ‘Goodbye to Grand Narratives? Moving the soviet War memorial in Tallinn’, 77-96 Martin Evans, ‘Memories, Monuments, Histories: The Re-thinking of the Second World War since 1989’, National Identities, 8/4 (2006), 317-48. Lisa Maya Knauer and Daniel J. Walkowitz (eds), Memory and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space (Duke University Press, 2004) – especially Anna Krylova, ‘Dancing on the graves of the dead: building a Wolrd War II memorial in post Soviet Russia’, 83-103 István Deák, Jan T. and Tony Judt (eds), The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and its Aftermath (Princeton University Press, 2000) – especially Mark Mazower, ‘The Cold War and the appropriation of memory: Greece after Liberation’, 212-232 Dan Stone (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History (2012), chs 34, 35 Further Reading Jay Winter, ‎Emmanuel Sivan (eds), War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (2000) Jan-Werner Müller (ed.), Memory and power in post-war Europe: studies in the presence of the past: studies in the presence of the past (2002) Pakier, MalGorzata and Bo Strath (eds) (2010), A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance (New York and Oxford: Berghahn) Wood, Nancy, Vectors of Memory: Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe (Berg, 1999) Frank Biess, ‎Robert G. Moeller (eds), Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World war in Europe (2010) Marc Silberman, ‎Florence Vatan (eds), Memory and Postwar Memorials: Confronting the Violence of the Past (2013) Uilleam Blacker, Aleksandr Ėtkind, Julie Fedor (eds), Memory and theory in Eastern Europe (2013) online Alexander Etkind, ‎Rory Finnin, ‎Uilleam Blacker, Remembering Katyn (2013) Heike Karge, ‘Mediated remembrance: local practices of remembering the Second World War in Tito’s Yugoslavia’, European Review of History / Revue Européenne d’ Histoire, 16/1 (2009) Nora Berend and Christopher Clark, ‘Not Just a Phase: the Hungarian government’s attempts to rewrite the country’s past’, London Review of Books, 36/22 (20 November 2014), 19-21 Topic 4 – ‘What if it happened again?’: Fear and Anxiety in Interwar Britain (LN) The historian Richard Overy has argued that the dominant cultural ‘mood’ in interwar Britain was one of pessimism; that the key cultural impact of the First World War was to persuade the cultural and intellectual elites that the progress so long associated with modernity had ended, and that decline and even the imminent end of society was imminent. This we consider a range of cultural, political and emotional responses to the First World War in interwar Britain, exploring the ways that people both lived with the past and made use of it in their everyday lives. Tasks and Questions for Discussion Was the search for a lasting peace, both through the League of Nations and pacifist movements, a key legacy of the Great War? What were the meanings of Armistice Day for the British people? Did these change in the late 1930s? Is Overy right in his claim that the interwar years were ‘a morbid age’? Key Reading Richard Overy (2009), The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars (London: Allen lane) especially chapters 1, 5, 8 and 9. Trudi Tate and Kate Kennedy (eds) (2014) The Silent Morning: Culture and memory After the Armistice (Manchester: Manchester University Press), especially Chapters 13 and 14. Adrian Gregory, (1994), The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day 1914-1948 (Oxford: Berg), especially chapters 4 and 5. Martin Francis (2014) ‘Attending to Ghosts: Some reflections on the disavowals of British Great War historiography’, Twentieth Century British History, 25:3, 347-367. Further Reading Jon Lawrence (2003) Forging a peaceable Kingdom: War, violence and fear of brutalization in post-First World War Britain. Journal of Modern History 75(3): 557-589. Lucy Noakes, ‘A Broken Silence?’ Mass Observation, Armistice Day and ‘Everyday Life’ in Britain, 1937-1941′, Journal of European Studies, Vol. 45, No. 4, 2015 David Cannadine (1981) War and death, grief and mourning in modern Britain. In Whaley, J (ed) Mirrors of mortality: Social studies of the history of death. London: Routledge, pp 187-242. Martin Ceadel, (1980) Pacifism in Britain 1914-1945: The defining of a faith. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Susan Grayzel, (2012), At Home and Under Fire: Air raids and Culture in Britain from the Great war to the Blitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), especially Chapters 4,,5 and 6. Helen McCarthy, (2011) The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism 1918-1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press) Helen McCarthy, ‘Democratising British Foreign Policy: Rethinking the Peace Ballot 1934-5, Journal of British Studies, 49:2, 2010, pp358-387. Topic 2 – Remembering and Commemorating the Great War (LN) 2014 saw the centenary of the outbreak of ‘the Great War’; an event that has come to be seen as defining the rest of the twentieth century. IN Britain, as in many other countries, this anniversary was marked by a wave of commemorative events, which continue today. In this first seminar, we consider why the centenary is seen as so significant., exploring the legacies of the war in their geo-political, social, cultural and personal contexts. Tasks and Questions for Discussion Why has the centenary of the Great War been seen as significant? What elements of the war have centenary events and commemorations focused upon? What does this suggest to us about the meaning(s) of the Great War today? What does the poppy of remembrance mean in the 21st century? NOTE: Please research, and come prepared to talk about, one example of the way the war has been commemorated since 2014. These could include representations in the media, community history projects, performances, artistic representations, museum displays, political debate or anything else you are interested in. If you are unsure, please email me to discuss. L.noakes@brighton.ac.uk Key Reading Helen B. McCartney, (2104) ‘The First World war Soldier and His Contemporary Image in Britain’, International Affairs, 90:2, pp219-315 David Reynolds (2013) The Long Shadow. The Great War and the Twentieth Century (London: Simon & Schuster), especially conclusion, pp419-436 Richard Smith (2015) ‘The Multicultural First World war. Memories of the West Indian Contribution in Contemporary Britain’ Journal of European Studies, 45:4, pp347-363 Jay Winter (2006) Remembering war: The Great War Between Memory and History in the 20th Century (New Haven: Yale University Press). Read as much as you can but especially ‘Introduction’ pp1-14, and Chapters 9, 10 and 11. Further Reading Alison Fell and Martin Hurcombe (2014) ‘Veteran Identities: One Hundred Years of the First World War’, Journal of War and Culture Studies, 6:4, 2013, pp263-266. Michael Gove 92014) ‘Why Does the Left Insist on Belittling True British Heroes?’’, The Daily Mail, 2 January 2014 – and subsequent debate e.g Richard Evans (2014) ‘Michael Gove Shows His Ignorance of History Again’, The Guardian, 6 January 2014. Heather Jones (2013) ‘As the Centenary Approaches. The Regeneration of First World War Historiography’, The Historical Journal 56:3, pp857-878. ‘The First World War: 15 Legacies Still With Us Today’, The Guardian, 15 January 2014 Bart Ziino (2010) ‘A Lasting Gift to His Descendents. Family Memory and the Great War in Australia’, History and Memory, 22;2, pp125-146. Bart Ziino (ed) (2015) Remembering the First World War (London: Routledge). Look at websites such as the Imperial War Museum’s ‘Lives of the Great War’ https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/, 1914-18 Now https://www.1418now.org.uk/, Gateways to the First World War http://www.gatewaysfww.org.uk/ to get a sense of the centenary projects and accompanying debates.