The 8th International Conference of the International Society for First World War Studies will explore the theme of “Landscapes of War”. In recent years scholars have sought to move towards a global history of the Great War, focusing on the geographical scope and diversity of the conflict, from Flanders to the Caucasus, the Alps to East Africa, from the Mediterranean to the oceans. This conference will focus on the physical spaces in which the war took place across the many different theatres of war, and the ways in which these diverse landscapes were encountered, altered, imagined, experienced, represented and remembered. How did the physical characteristics of the various battlegrounds impact on military strategies and operations? How did men, women and children interpret the landscape? How did generals, soldiers, prisoners, workers, farmers, reporters, artists, architects, tourists and others interact with the landscapes of the war? How does the study of the landscape enhance our understanding of the military, political, economic, social and cultural history of the conflict?

Thursday 10 September 2015 – Trento, Aula Magna of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Via Santa Croce, 77

9.30-9.45        Welcome:
President of the ISFWWS: Pierre Purseigle (University of Warwick and Yale University)
Director of the Italian-German Historical Institute, Trento / President of the Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento

9.45-10.00      Introduction:
Organizing Committee
Roberto Bianchi (University of Florence)
Selena Daly (University College Dublin/University of California, Santa Barbara)
Marco Mondini (Italian-German Historical Institute, Trento/University of Padua)
Martina Salvante (German Historical Institute, Rome)
Vanda Wilcox (John Cabot University, Rome)

10.00-11.30   Panel 1: Encounters
·       Samraghni Bonnerjee (University of Sheffield)
‘The Home and the World: War-Torn Landscape and Literary Imagination of a Bengali Military Doctor in Mesopotamia During World War I’
Discussant: Roberto Mazza
·       Robert Clemm (Grove City College)
‘“Whereupon thou standest is holy ground”: Perceptions of Africa in World War 1’
Discussant: Daniel Steinbach (King’s College London)
·       Jessica Meyer (University of Leeds)
‘The Long Carry: Landscapes and the Shaping of British Medical Masculinities in the First World War’
Discussant: Heather Perry (University of North Carolina, Charlotte)

11.30-11.45    Break

11.45-13.00    Panel 2: Arts
·       Richard Galliano Valdiserra (Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
‘Mowgli in the Dolomites’: Landscape and Ethnographic Representations of the Italian Front by Rudyard Kipling in 1917
Discussant: Camillo Zadra (Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra, Rovereto)
·       Stephanie Seul (University of Bremen)
‘“To witness how nature is perishing is impossible to bear”: Landscape portrayals of the Austro-Italian front in the wartime reports of the Austrian war correspondent and photographer Alice Schalek’
Discussant: Franziska Heimburger (L’ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris)

13.00-14.30    Lunch, hosted by the Fondazione Bruno Kessler

14.30-16.30    Panel 3: Military
·       Nicholas Murray (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas)
‘The Changing Landscape of Trench Stalemate’
Discussant: Dennis Showalter (Colorado College)
·       Laura Rowe (University of Exeter)
‘‘Like a cinema through glasses’: Seascapes and the Experience of War for Royal Naval Personnel in the Great War’
Discussant: Mark Jones (Freie Universität Berlin and University College Dublin)
·       Mauricio N. Vergara (University of Padua)
‘Analysis of defensive lines in the Tyrol Front (the Eastern Alps)’
Discussant: Paolo Plini (CNR-Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research, Rome)
·       Christoph Nübel (Humboldt University, Berlin)
‘Warscapes. Managing space on the Western Front, 1914-1918’
Discussant:  Jeffrey Grey (USNW Canberra)

Friday 11 September 2015 – Visit to Asiago Plateau

Keynote Address: Nicholas Saunders, Title TBC (University of Bristol)

Transfer via coach/ minibus from Trento, departing am, arriving Padova pm – all costs to be covered by local sponsors
−      visit to Austro-Hungarian border fortress, keynote speech
−      lunch hosted by the Comune di Asiago
−      visit to the Asiago War Memorial/Ossuary
−      scenic drive across battlefield to Padova
−      conference dinner at Villa Giusti, location of the signing of the Armistice, 3 November 1918

 
Saturday 12 September 2015: University of Padua

9.00-9.15        Welcome:
President of the University Committee for the Great War Centenary

9.15-10.45      Panel 4: Environment
·       Tait Keller (Rhodes College, Memphis)
‘War Lands the World Over: Industrial Agriculture and the Great War’
Discussant: Pierre Purseigle (University of Warwick and Yale University)
·       Jeffrey Reger (Georgetown University, Washington DC)
‘“Lamps never before dim are being extinguished from lack of olive oil”: Palestine in war and peace under Ottoman and British rule, 1910-1920’
Discussant: Brian Black (Penn State University Altoona)
·       Richard Tucker (University of Michigan)
‘Global Environmental Impacts of Mining and Forestry for the First Great Industrial War’
Discussant: Giorgio Sacchetti (University of Padua)

10.45-11.15    Break

11.15-13.00    Panel 5: Built Environment
·       Sandra Camarda (University of Luxembourg)
‘Land of the Red Soil: War Ruins and Industrial Landscape in Luxembourg, 1914-1918’
Discussant: Annette Becker (Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense)
·       Ross Wilson (University of Chicester)
‘Parades and patriotism: streetscapes of New York during the First World War’
Discussant: Jennifer Keene (Chapman University, Orange, California)
·       Tim Fox-Godden (University of Kent)
‘Sites of Memory Beyond Mourning? Remembrance and place in the war cemeteries of the old Western Front’
Discussant: Edward Madigan (Royal Holloway, University of London)

13.00-14.00    Lunch

14.00-15.30    Panel 6: Science
·       Pascal Ndjock Nyobe (University of Douala, Cameroon)
‘Rain and bad weather in time of war: Strategic Challenges of Climatic and Environmental Factors during the Great War in Cameroon, 1914-1916’
Discussant: Nicola Labanca (University of Siena)
·       Meg Rosenberg (Keck Institute for Space Studies, Los Angeles)
‘From Ypres to the Moon: WWI Battlefields and the Impact Hypothesis for Lunar Crater Formation’
Discussant: Aldino Bondesan (University of Padua)

·       Oliver Stein (Freie Universität Berlin)
‘Scientists in Uniform: The German Military and the Investigation of the Ottoman Landscape, 1914-1918’
Discussant: John Horne (Trinity College Dublin)

15.30-15.45                Break

15.45-17.15                Concluding round table
Brian Black (Penn State University Altoona)
Patrizia Dogliani (University of Bologna)
Nicola Labanca (University of Siena)
Jenny MacLeod (University of Hull)

17.15-17.30                Conference Conclusion