HIST 218: Representations of World War I (BMC)

Volume 3 of The Cambridge History of the First World War explores the social and cultural history of the war and considers the role of civil society throughout the conflict; that is to say those institutions and practices outside the state through which the war effort was waged. Drawing on 25 years of historical scholarship, it sheds new light on culturally significant issues such as how families and medical authorities adapted to the challenges of war and the shift that occurred in gender roles and behaviour that would subsequently reshape society. Adopting a transnational approach, this volume surveys the war's treatment of populations at risk, including refugees, minorities and internees, to show the full extent of the disaster of war and, with it, the stubborn survival of irrational kindness and the generosity of spirit that persisted amidst the bitterness at the heart of warfare, with all its contradictions and enduring legacies.

A new exploration of literary and artistic responses to WW1 from 1914 to the present. This authoritative reference work examines literary and artistic responses to the war’s upheavals across a wide range of media and genres, from poetry to pamphlets, sculpture to television documentary, and requiems to war reporting.

The poetry of the First World War remains a singularly popular and powerful body of work. This Companion brings together leading scholars in the field to re-examine First World War poetry in English at the start of the centennial commemoration of the war. It offers historical and critical contexts, fresh readings of the important soldier-poets, and investigations of the war poetry of women and civilians, Georgians and Anglo-American modernists and of poetry from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the former British colonies. The volume explores the range and diversity of this body of work, its rich afterlife and the expanding horizons and reconfiguration of the term 'First World War Poetry'. Complete with a detailed chronology and guide to further reading, the Companion concludes with a conversation with three poets - Michael Longley, Andrew Motion and Jon Stallworthy - about why and how the war and its poetry continue to resonate with us.

Providing a clear, chronological account of the campaigns on the Western and Eastern fronts, this book then moves on to investigate the often ignored areas of the war, such as war poets, logistics, and the diplomacy of war aims and peace moves

The contributors to the present volume approach World War I and World War II as complex and intertwined crossroads leading to the definition of the new European (and world) reality, and deeply pervading the making of the twentieth century. These scholars belong to different yet complementary areas of research - history, literature, cinema, art history; they come from various national realities and discuss questions related to Italy, Britain, Germany, Poland, Spain, at times introducing a comparison between European and North American memories of the two World War experiences.

From the Treaty of Versailles to the 2018 centenary and beyond, the history of the First World War has been continually written and rewritten, studied and contested, producing a rich historiography shaped by the social and cultural circumstances of its creation. Writing the Great War provides a groundbreaking survey of this vast body of work, assembling contributions on a variety of national and regional historiographies from some of the most prominent scholars in the field. By analyzing perceptions of the war in contexts ranging from Nazi Germany to India's struggle for independence, this is an illuminating collective study of the complex interplay of memory and history.

Based on a rich array of sources that capture the voices of both political leaders and ordinary Americans, Uncle Sam Wants You offers a vivid and provocative new interpretation of American political history, revealing how the tensions of mass mobilization during World War I led to a significant increase in power for the federal government. Christopher Capozzola shows how, when the war began, Americans at first mobilized society by stressing duty, obligation, and responsibility over rights and freedoms. But the heated temper of war quickly unleashed coercion on an unprecedented scale, making wartime America the scene of some of the nation's most serious political violence, including notorious episodes of outright mob violence.