Call for Papers: Unknown fronts
The “Eastern Turn” in First World War history
On November 5/6, 2015, the University of Groningen will host a conference about the South Eastern and Eastern European theatre of the First World War. ASCH researchers and graduate students are invited to submit for 15-minute presentations until 10 May 2015.
Since the fall of Communism and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, many unknown sources in the archives of different Eastern European countries have become available for international scholars. When in 2013 Christopher Clark published his book The Sleepwalkers, he presented apparently unknown details from the South-Eastern and Eastern-European theatres of the prelude to the First world war to a large, partly un-academic reading public. It goes without saying that these new findings provoked historical debates in academic circles both in the East and the West of Europe. The Clark-controversy turned out to be not a coincidence, as it seems we can speak of an “Eastern Turn” in First World War historiography. The iconic image of the Western Front’s trenches, made famous in cinematography and war poetry, can be revised and redefined. In the process of European integration, additional attention should be paid to the Eastern battlefields and home fronts of the Great War, both in historiography as well as in the culture and politics of memory.