Touching War

Directed by Christine Sylvester

with the Department of Politics and International Relations

County Main, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, Lancaster LA1 4YD, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1524 594262 Fax: +44 (0) 1524 594238 E-mail: c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

October 2008: War and Touch

Keynote Speaker: Professor Anne Orford, Law Melbourne University

“The Passions of Humanitarian War”

Date: 15 October 2008; 5.00 pm, reception to follow.
Institute for Advanced Studies meeting room 2/3

 

Roundtable Discussion: War and Touch from Diverse Disciplinary Perspectives

Participants include:

Anne Orford plus LU academics Mary Hamilton (Educational Research), Israel Butler, James Summers (Law), Jayne Steel (English and Creative Writing), Christine Sylvester, April Biccum and Pat Chilton from Politics/IR

Date: 16 October 2008, 3-5.30 pm, reception to follow.
Institute for Advanced Studies meeting room 2/3

War and the movies- A talk by Jayne Steel

Date: 22 October 2008; 5.00 pm
Lancaster University Cinema

Contact: c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

November 2008: Attractions and Costs of Today’s Wars

Keynote Speaker: Dan Smith, OBE, Secretary General, International Alert "Why The Attractions of War Persist."

Date: 10 November 2008, 6.30 - 8.00 pm
Cavendish Lecture Theatre

Workshop: Touching "New" Wars of Our Time, with Professor Stephen Chan, International Relations, SOAS.

Other participants include: Jude Murison (Edinburgh University) Christine Sylvester, Amalendu Misra, Feargal Cochrane from Politics & IR, Lancaster University.

Date: 12 November 2008, 3-6.00 pm
Institute for Advanced Studies meeting room 2/3

 

Publishing on War: What are the Trends for the Future?

A workshop with Polity, Routledge, Manchester University Press and the journal Civil Wars for early career academics

Date: 14 November 2008, 2-5 pm, George Fox LT4

Contact: f.cochrane@lancaster.ac.uk

December 2008: War Touching Justice

Workshop on Ethics, Justice, and War

With: Professor Kimberly Hutchings, International Relations, London School of Economics, speaking on “Feminist Just War Theory,” 12:00-1:30

Professor Mervyn Frost, War Studies, King's College London, speaking on “Understanding War in Ethical Terms” 5:00-6:30

Other Participants: Shuruq Naguib (Religious Studies), Peter Rowe (Law), Christine Sylvester, Patricia Chilton, Graham Smith, Mark Lacy (Politics/IR)

Date: 8 December 2008, 9.30-6.30 pm
Bowland North SR6

Contact: c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

January 2009: Words, Wounds and Memories

Roundtable Discussion: with War Journalists Moderated by Professor Annabelle Sreberny, Global Media and Post-National Communication, SOAS

Participants include: Malachi O'Doherty, Belfast broadcaster, reporter, and writer about conflict in Northern Ireland.

Jennifer Glasse, a freelance reporter who has covered wars in Africa, the Balkans, Afghanistan , and Iraq for the BBC, ABC and National Public Radio in the USA .

Date: 28 January 2008, 5.00 pm, Mgt School Lecture Theatre 11

Keynote Speaker: Professor Annabelle Sreberny Global Media and Post-National Communication, SOAS.

"Framing Iran for War" Date: 29 January 2009, 4.00 pm

Institute for Advanced Studies meeting room 2/3

Contact: c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

 

Workshop : Living and Remembering War

Led by Professor Mary Hamilton (Educational Research, Lancaster), with Denny Taylor (Literacy Studies, Hofstra), Heonik Kwon (Social Anthropology, Edinburgh), Kyoko Murakami (Education, Bath) Gale Parchoma (Educational Research, Lancaster) and discussants Mike Roper (Sociology, Essex) and Anita Wilson ( Literacy Research Centre, Lancaster).

This workshop will explore methodological & ethical issues involved in documenting experiences and memories of conflict, both individual and collective. A variety of approaches from oral history, literacy studies, discourse analysis, ethnography and educational action research will be presented. Speakers have worked in a range of international contexts with children and adults. A common theme in the presentations is to consider the practical implications: how can these approaches to research help us understand and further peace building processes and education in post-conflict societies?

Programme for event

Both staff and Postgraduate Students are warmly invited to this event.

Date: 23 January 2009,9-5.00 pm
Institute for Advanced Studies meeting room 2/3

To register for this event please click here.

Contact: m.hamilton@lancaster.ac.uk or c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

February 2009: Wars on "Terror"

Keynote Speaker: Jeremy Bowen, Middle East Correspondant, BBC

UNFORTUNATELY JEREMY BOWEN HAS HAD TO CANCEL HIS SCHEDULED LECTURE FOR 25 th FEBRUARY DUE TO THE RECENT TURMOIL IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND HIS ONGOING REPORTING DUTIES FROM THE REGION

Date: 25 February 2009, 6.00 - 8.00 pm
George Fox LT 1

 

Workshop: Theorizing Terror and Its Aftermaths, with Professor Joseba Zulaika, Sociology, Nevada/Bilbao

Participants include: , Bulent Diken (Sociology, LU), Bruce Bennett (Cultural Studies, LU) and Feargal Cochrane, Vicky Mason, Christine Sylvester, Swati Parashar from Politics/IR, Lancaster University

Date: 26 February 2008, 9.45-6.00 pm
Institute for Advanced Studies meeting room 2/3

Discussion:

An Informal Discussion with Joseba Zulaika And Christine Sylvester About Conflict, Regeneration, and the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum, Wednesday, February 25, 2-3:30, County Main B150. Sponsored by IAS.

Christine Sylvester will lead an informal Q&A discussion with Joseba Zulaika for interested staff and graduate students.

For information contact Professor Christine Sylvester (Politics/IR): c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

Contact:

v.mason@lancaster.ac.uk

c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

March 2009: Women: Armed and Dangerous?

With:

Megan MacKenzie, Women in Public Policy, Harvard

Cristina Masters, Politics, Manchester

Swati Parashar, Politics/IR, Lancaster

Corinna Peniston-Bird, History, Lancaster

Elina Penttinen, Tampere Peace Research Institute

Laura Sjoberg, Political Science, Virginia Tech

Christine Sylvester, Politics/IR, Lancaster

Roundtable: Is War a Masculine Site?

Participants: MacKenzie, Penttinen, Sjoberg and Christine Sylvester.

Date: 19 March 2009, 4-6.00 pm.
Institute for Advanced Studies meeting room 2/3

 

Workshop: The War Question for Feminists

Participants Participants include all of the above plus Cristina Masters (Politics, Manchester University), Corinna Peniston-Bird (History LU), Swati Parashar (Politics/IR LU) and more.

Date: 20 March 2009, 9.30-5.30 pm
Institute for Advanced Studies meeting room 2/3

Contact: c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

April 2009: Bodies of War

Workshop: Where Are the Bodies of War?

Date: 3 April 2009, 10:00-5:30 Institute for Advanced Studies, meeting room 2/3

Keynote Speaker: Brigitte Holzner, Director of Gender and Development, Austrian Development Agency. Author of numerous articles on overseas development, most recently “Legal Pluralism in the Family Law: Implications for Development Policy,” in Family, Law, Religion. Debates and Cases in the Muslim Worlds (2009), “Agrarian Restructuring and Gender – Designing Family Farms in Central and Eastern Europe,” Gender, Place and Culture (2008), “The Theatre of War,” Forced Migration Review (2007), “Gender Habitus und Entwicklungszusammenarbeit: Stärken und Grenzen Bourdieu'scher Konzepte,” in Politik - Programme - Projekte. Menschenorientierte Entwicklungszusammenarbeit im Sinne von Bourdieu (2007), and “Youth, Sexuality and Sex Education Messages in Indonesia: Issues of Desire and Control,” Reproductive Health Matters (2004).

Other Participants: Athina Karatzogianni (Media, Culture and Society, Hull), Adi Kuntsman (Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures, Manchester), Pat Noxolo (Geography, Loughborough), Cami Rowe, Swati Parashar, and Christine Sylvester (Politics/IR, Lancaster)

Contact: c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk

War is a defining characteristic of the post-World War II era. Far from abating over time, as many people expected and hoped, war seems firmly established as a transnational and transcultural social institution that undergoes constant change. World War II was barely over when a Cold War emerged (with hot wars in Korea and then Vietnam) and decolonization wars broke out in Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America. Since then there have been secessionist wars in the former Soviet Union, Troubles continuing until recently in Northern Ireland, revenge wars in the Balkans, and genocide in Rwanda. Terror wars and humanitarian interventions now convulse Iraq and Afghanistan while armed conflicts in Sudan linger and wars between Israel and its neighbors flare periodically.

Global communications leave few people in the contemporary world isolated from and unaffected by specific wars or the constancy of war into the twenty-first century. Touching War highlights people's experiences of war more so than military strategies, weaponry, tactics, historical wars, or national interest politics. The focus is on the many ways differently located people touch war and are touched by it in physical, intellectual, and emotional ways -as citizens, refugees, artists, novelists, jurists, journalists, novelists, combatants, veterans, victims, and researchers of war experiences. Speakers, roundtables, workshops, exhibitions, and exercises group around a number of monthly sub-themes.

Film Festival 2008: The War Touch

Runs October 2008 through March 2009. University Cinema, 6 pm. Jayne Steel Organizer, sponsored by the LU Film Society

Films for 2008

  • Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) - Director: Michael Winterbottom
  • No Man’s Land (2001) - Director: Danis Tanovic

Date: 22 and 29 October 2008

 

War and the movies- A talk by Jayne Steel

Date: 22 October 2008; 5.00 pm
Lancaster University Cinema

 

  • Jarhead (2005) - Director: Sam Mendes
  • World Trade Center (2006) - Director: Oliver Stone

Date: November 5 and 26

 

Innocent Voices (2004) - Director: Luis Mandoki
Battle Royale (2000) - Director Kinji Fukasu

Date: 3 and 17 December 2008

 

 

  • The Killing Fields (1984) - Director: Roland Joffe
  • Salvador (1986) - Director: Oliver Stone

Date: 14 and 28 January 2009

 

  • The Deerhunter (1978) - Director: Michael Cimino
  • Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) - Director: Michael Moore

Date: 4 and 25 February 2009

 

  • G.I. Jane (1997), Director: Ridley Scott
  • Rachida (2002), Director: Yasmina Bachir-Chouikh

Date: 4 and 25 March 2009

The Organisers

Lancaster University and the  Institute for Advanced Studies

Other activities related to war and sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies have been organized by staff in Health Research, English and Creative Writing, Sociology and LICA. Contact m.mort@lancaster.ac.uk, l.c.moore@lancaster.ac.uk or g.davies@lancaster.ac.uk

For further information on Touching War contact Professor Christine Sylvester by e-mail c.sylvester@lancaster.ac.uk. http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/events/touchingwar/

 

Touch and Regard War Right Now. Click Here:

Upcoming LICA Events on Conflict and War

  Talks:  

Jill Gibbon: War M art: drawing the arms trade, Illustrated Talk 1.00-2.00pm Thursday 11 December, B17 Bowland Annexe ( Art Building )

Official war art is based on an ‘eyewitness' experience of the battlefield, but with the global expansion of arms manufacturing, and the privatisation of much of the military, war has become big business.  Jill Gibbon draws the arms trade. 

Paul Gough:  New wounds, new memorials: representing and recording memorial sites on distant battlefields , Illustrated talk, 3.00-5.00pm, Thursday 22 January 2009, Bowland North Seminar Room 20

 

Gough considers how remembrance societies and ex-servicemen's groups re-inscribe First World War battlefields with memory markers, fresh stone and detailed texts. In their ambition to retrieve the past, new landscapes have been contrived and created, and new readings of the once-battered landscape imposed on its recuperated state.

Workshop:

PGs with Jill Gibbon , 3-5pm, Thursday 11 December, B17 Bowland Annexe ( Art Building )

For research students who mix creative practice and theory projects or employ methodologies of ‘action research,' a dialectic of art history and practice in Gibbon's own work and in student projects, keeping an eye on the balance of practice and theory and other issues.

For information on these events, contact Gerry Davies ( g.Davies@lancaster.ac.uk )