War Poets Collection lecture: Prof Alison Fell
Nov 13, 2023
Location
Craiglockhart campus
Description
Glorifying Women: Remembering Women’s Roles in the First World War
After the Armistice, the British nation in mourning was most often represented by a grieving widow or mother. War commemoration tended to set in stone a traditional understanding of women as the passive observers of war, crowning ‘distant ardours’ and mourning ‘laurelled memories’. Yet not only did thousands of women actively respond to and participate in the rites and rituals of commemoration, but they also instigated, planned, designed and sculpted memorials and ceremonies. Further, some women saw themselves as having been on ‘active service’, and therefore as members of a ‘war generation’ who had more in common with the bitter soldier persona of Sassoon’s poem than with other non-combatants. This talk will examine a broad range of war memorials and commemorative activities, arguing that while many adhered to a traditional gendered view of wartime sacrifice, others offered a very different interpretation of the war and its devastating losses.
Professor Alison Fell is Dean of the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures at the University of Liverpool. She has published widely on women and war, particularly the First World War, including edited books on the women’s movement and nurses, and two recent monographs published by Cambridge University Press: Women as Veterans in Britain and France after the First World War (2018) and Warrior Women: The Cultural Politics of Armed Women c.1850-1945 (2023).
The German Diaspora during World War I: Remembering Internment Camps in Britain and the Commonwealth
Mar 9, 2018
Location
The National Archives, Kew.
Description
Invited talk to promote the above project at one-day public event on Cultural History in Practice: Spies and Spying. Public study day, c. 25 attendees from both academia and general public. (https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cultural-history-in-practice-spies-and-spying-tickets-42859779755)
