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Huizinga summer school 2013 – Cultures of war and peace

International Conference and Summer School: Cultures of War and Peace

Conference: 17 – 19 June 2013 Summer school: 17-20 June 2013 and further dates PDF of the full programme, including abstracts

Conference

Summer school: masterclasses and workshops

conference page Credits: 5 ECTS
PDF programme Conference PDF complete programme Summer school
Open to: all
No fee
Open to: PhD candidates and RMa-students Fee (non members): €250
Registration is obligatory — email us: huizinga-fgw@uva.nl Registration RMa Programme Registration PhD Programme Registration closes 10 May, 2013.

Cultures of War and Peace

From June 17 to 20 June 2013 the Huizinga Institute for Cultural History will host an international conference on the subject of Cultures of War and Peace. This conference – to be held at the Peace Palace in The Hague and at Utrecht University – seeks to explore key moments in the cultural history of war or peace. It sees ‘war’ and ‘peace’ not as mutually exclusive phenomena in history, but as closely related occurrences. The conference therefore concentrates on the special interactional dynamic of this nexus as it determines our lives, and as it explores how the relationship has affected individual, national, religious, scientific, and aesthetic cultures.

Do we wish to study the cultural interconnection between war and peace from the point of view of Clausewitz, who saw war as the continuation of diplomacy by violent means? Or do we prefer to approach the connection from the angle adopted by Michel Foucault, who argued that peace is, instead, to be seen as the continuation of war by non-violent means? The conference will address these and other issues. Programme: The conference begins at the Peace Palace in The Hague on 17 June. Here, three keynote speakers will open the conference:

  • Jay Winter, Yale University: Writing War
  • Selma Leydesdorff, University of Amsterdam: Beyond the Language of the Courtroom: the Narratives of the Survivors of Sebrenica
  • Frank van Vree, University of Amsterdam: The Imagery of War: Screening the Battlefield in the Twentieth Century

The conference then continues at Utrecht University, on 18 and 19 June. Speakers at Utrecht include:

  • Hans Cools, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven: Princes of peace. Princely discourses on peace from Charles V to Louis XIV
  • Gerhard Hirschfeld: The memory of the ‘Great War’ in Germany
  • Lotte Jensen, Radboud University Nijmegen: War and peace in shaping early modern Dutch identity
  • Michael Kemper, University of Amsterdam: Cultures of Jihad: Islamic civil war
  • Olaf van Nimwegen, Utrecht University: The enigma of firepower c. 1500-1900
  • David Pascoe, Utrecht University: English novelists and War Office politics in the Second World War
  • Geert Somsen, ‘The sciences were never at war’: ideological uses of science in war and peace
  • Michael Wintle, University of Amsterdam: War and European identity in the twentieth century

Time and venues:
* Monday 17 June, 14:00 – 18:00 hrs, Peace Palace, The Hague. * Tuesday 18 June, 09:30 – 13:00 hrs, Sweelinckzaal, Drift 21, Utrecht University.
* Wednesday 19 June, 09:00 – 13:00 hrs, Kanunnikenzaal, Utrecht University.

Summer school

This three-day international conference will be interspersed with and followed by workshops and masterclasses for postgraduate students (PhD candidates and RMa students) of cultural history, coordinated by Lotte Jensen of Radboud University Nijmegen. Together with additional sessions before and after the main conference, these educational activities comprise the Summer school. Postgraduate sessions in the summer school will be led by:

  • Jay Winter, History, Yale University: Commemorating War
  • Paul Schuurman, Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam: Montesqieu on war
  • Raymond Fagel, History, Leiden University: Spanish Tyranny
  • Geert Buelens, Literature, Utrecht University: Remembering First World war Cultures: Belligerents, Occupied Peoples & Neutrals

The plenaries and conference sessions will be held in English, as will Jay Winter’s masterclass; the other summer school sessions for postgraduates will be held in Dutch. There will be separate sessions for PhD candidates and RMa students. A detailed programme of this Summer school is now available, including information about readings and preparation. Please register via the link above. Introductory classes:
* Friday May 24 (10.00 – 15.00), Radboud University, Erasmus Building, room E. 2.72, Nijmegen.
* Friday June 7 (10.00 – 15.00), Radboud University, Erasmus Building, room E. 2.70, Nijmegen. Masterclasses:
* Tuesday 18 June, 14:00 – 17:00 hrs, Drift 25 102, Utrecht University.
* Wednesday 19 June, 14:00 – 17:00 hrs, Kanunnikenzaal, Utrecht University.
* Thursday 20 June, 10:00 – 17:00 hrs, Kanunnikenzaal, Utrecht University. Concluding session (RMa students only):
* Friday August 23 (13.00 – 15.00), Radboud University, Erasmus Building,  room E 2.15 A, Nijmegen. Organisation: Summer school teaching co-ordinator: Lotte Jensen ( l.jensen@let.ru.nl) Conference organizers: Ton Hoenselaars (a.j.hoenselaars@uu.nl), Michael Wintle (m.j.wintle@uva.nl) and Huizinga Institute (huizinga-fgw@uva.nl)