War, Gender and Visual Culture Network
The War, Gender and Visual Culture Network is an alliance of scholars working on the visual cultures of twentieth and twenty-first century wars. It aims to disseminate new research on war and visual culture and to promote collaborative work through symposia, projects and publications. Our range of interests encompasses the visual arts including public sculpture and war memorials, photography, film and visual communication, and extends to architecture and the visual geographies of war.
Key focuses of our current work are the commemorative culture of war and the gendering of violence and conflict.
Recent events
2 July 2008 Symposium: The Making and Remaking of European Memory after 1945, Part 1, University of Reading
24 October Symposium: The Making and Remaking of Memory after 1945, Part 2, Birkbeck College
Planning and contributions to:
22-25 April 2009: Conference: Myths, Gender and the Military Conquest of Air and Sea, Carl von Ossietzky University, Germany.
Recent research papers by network members
Sue Malvern:
2008: Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, workshop. Paper: The state of research on visual culture and war in 20th and 21st century Britain and Germany.
2008: CAA Dallas, USA, panel: Power and the Gendered Imagery of Contemporary Global Politics: Anti-war art … and feminist?
2008: Birmingham University, Conference: Roles of the Visual in Overcoming Dictatorships: The Spoils of Freedom: Feminism and art after the fall of socialism
2009: Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, conference,Myths, Gender and the Military Conquest of Air and Sea. Paper: Aerial bombardment, cultural anxiety and the remembrance of ruins
Gabriel Koureas:
2009: Birkbeck, School of History of Art, Film and VisualMedia, conference: The Photobook. Paper: Istanbul: Memories of a City (2005): Orhan Pamouk's melancholic narrative and fragmented photographic framing.
2009: Birkbeck, School of English and Humanities, conference: After the War: Post-War Structures of Feeling. Paper: The Memory and Gender of Terrorism. Constructing and remembering the image of the Terrorist during the War of Independence in Cyprus 1955-1959.
2009: Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, conference, Myths, Gender and the Military Conquest of Air and Sea. Paper: Public Remembrance, Private Grief.
2009: Birkbeck, Centre for Kinship and Community, official launch event: Conversation as Community: On the Stakes of Painting and Photographing the Bonds of Kinship and Community. Paper, Divided Communities.
Recent and forthcoming publications by network members
Gabriel Koureas: 'Trauma, space and embodiment: the sensorium of a divided city', Journal of War and Culture Studies, 1. 3, Nov 2008, pp.309-324.
Gabriel Koureas: ''Desiring Skin': Eugenics, Trauma and Acting Out of Masculinities in British Inter-war Visual Culture', in F. Brauer and A. Cullen (eds.), Corpus Delecti, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 163-188
Sue Malvern: Review article: Art History after 9/11. Art History, 32.2, 2009, pp. 387-399
Members
Sue Malvern, University of Reading: http://www.reading.ac.uk/arthistory/Aboutus/staff/s-b-malvern.asp
Gabriel Koureas, Birkbeck: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hafvm/staff/staff/staffMembers/KoureasGabriel