World War 1 Media, Entertainments & Popular Culture Conference 2nd and 3rd July 2015
Posted: October 24, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentWorld War 1
Media, Entertainments & Popular Culture
Two Day Conference with an Exhibition and Performances
2nd and 3rd July 2015
People’s History Museum, Manchester, UK
Organised by: University of Chester, University of Salford, UCLAN, Manchester Metropolitan University, People’s History Museum.
Email: Chris Hart c.hart@chester.ac.uk
URL: www.ww1.midrash.co.uk (under construction)
Brief Call
The scope : this conference aims to bring together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine and discuss both contemporary and subsequent accounts, interpretations and uses of the First World War in terms of mass and popular media and entertainments.
We are inviting proposals for papers on any aspect of the Media, Entertainments and Popular Culture during and after the First World War. Possible themes include,
Photography, films, newsreels
WWI celebrities
Contemporaneous press reportage
Wartime censorship
Oppositional/dissenting voices
Music hall performers
Wartime images
The popular press and WWI
Wartime and cultural memory
Popular music
Sports
Pubs and clubs
The war in popular fiction
Cartoons, Posters
Post 1918 popular uses of World War I themes.
The Call (longer version)
Four universities and the People’s History Museum, Manchester, have come together to stage this conference and related events.
This conference has two main themes. The first is popular mass entertainments (e.g. singers, music, magazines, sport) that emerged as the war progressed. The second is the ways in which the war furnished the reference for subsequent popular mass consumed productions (e.g. The Big Parade, 1925, War Horse, 2011).
This conference is not about the trivial nor does it seek to trivialize. We expect there to be many events marking the start and key landmark events of the First World War, as is right and proper. Remembrance of the politics, battles, technologies and unimaginable sufferings should never be forgotten.
Whether civilian or serviceman or servicewoman popular mass entertainments had a part to play in their lives. This conference, therefore, does not aim to examine artistic production during and immediately after the war. Works by artists such as Gertler, Wadsworth, Wyllie, Bone, Lewis and Munnings, and many others, may have been popular amongst some sections of society and have become the stock knowledge for scholarship but they did not attract a mass audience. Along with contemporary sculpture, poetry and opera they remain the preserve of a minority, and are relatively unknown to the masses. There are exceptions such as McCrea’s ‘In Flanders Fields’ and possibly a few poems by Owens and Sassoon.
This conference is about the relationship between popular and mass entertainments during the war and the use of the war for subsequent mass audience productions. It aims to examine the role, form and development of entertainments created during and related to it post-1918. The music hall, the singers, performers, the cartoons, romantic novels, and cinema all had a place and role to contemporaries. By 1915 many of these may have relayed the experience of war and some provided the means to maintain morale and patriotism. Not all, however, supported the war. After one year of war initial optimism was confronted with the realization that this war was different to others. The number of wounded and killed was shockingly high. English coastal towns were bombarded by German battleships, whilst other cities were bombed from German airships.
Given the reality of the war the kinds of questions we have include the following. How did popular entertainments react to the war? What were the dynamics, politics and reception of different positions? In what ways did the form of mass entertainments change as the war progressed? What role did technology have in disseminating entertainments? How did commercial entertainment enterprises use the war to attract audiences? What differences and conflicts emerged between regions, classes and genders?
In addition to those who lived during the war we also want to examine and discuss how subsequent generations became audiences for entertainments based about the war. Cinema films such as The Big Parade (1925), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Farewell to Arms (1932) have become stock sources for film studies. But how did the messages and imagery they convey attract mass audiences? In what ways are mass entertainments during the war portrayed in post 1918 films, fiction and television? In what sense and why is the war experience shown as sadness, regret and ruling class stupidity? How do current generations understand the war through recent mass entertainments (e.g. Downton Abbey, The War Horse)?
The complexity and dynamics of historical and contemporary methodological issues relating to mass popular entertainments during the war and since 1918 are challenging.
Bringing the conference to the general public
Ironically our interest is academic and may not have mass appeal. The potential of this topic, therefore, places an emphasis to bring what we have to say to the widest possible audience. In the weeks leading up to the conference we intend to have an exhibition in the museum and at other locations around Manchester as well as on a web site of the phenomena we will be discussing at the conference. These will include the performance of songs, music, and films.
Abstract
Please email a 300 word abstract (stating your name, email address and institutional affiliation) to: c.hart@chester.ac.uk.
Outputs
A book of selected papers from the conference titled,
World War I: Media, Entertainments & Popular Culture. This will be a companion volume to our book World War II and the Media (2014).
A dedicated edition of Media, War & Conflict (Sage Publications).
Performances and screenings during the conference at the People’s History Museum. We hope you can suggest materials (songs, film, photographs) to be included.
Organising Committee
Chris Hart c.hart@chester.ac.uk
Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova v.petkova@chester.ac.uk
Craig Horner C.Horner@mmu.ac.uk
Carole O’Reilly c.oreilly@salford.ac.uk
Jim Aulich J.Aulich@mmu.ac.uk
Nick Mansfield NMansfield1@uclan.ac.uk
Gaynor Bagnall g.bagnall@salford.ac.uk
Address for correspondence
Dr Chris Hart
Department of Media
Warrington Campus
Faculty of Media and Performing Arts
University of Chester, England
WA2 ODB
Literature Reviewing
Posted: October 24, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentUndertaking a Literature Review
An Introduction for Postgraduate Researchers
in the Social Sciences and Humanities
Wednesday, 27th November, 2013,
Society For Research into Higher Education
This is a full day of work and discussion.
Dr Christopher Hart, University of Chester
This workshop is about doing a search and review of the literature for your research proposal and subsequent research project. The sessions will be a mix of showing and doing with the emphasis on doing and sharing. The aim is to present techniques for doing a literature review and look at these in terms of your own research needs.
Using the Researcher Development Framework (RDF), recently developed by Vitae, we will consider,
- how to map out the different sources and resources that can be used to find relevant research, ideas and theories
- how to limit the search and be efficient with time and focus intellectual effort
- examples of reviews, to look at what makes for a competent review, occasionally stopping on the way to think about methodological assumptions and their consequences
- the role of the research imagination, introducing some tools and techniques to unleash the creative researcher inside you
The session will be part talk, part demonstration and part hands-on, with plenty of time for questions and discussion about your research.
Chris Hart is currently at the University of Chester. He has held academic posts with Manchester, Salford, Birmingham City University and written learning materials for the Open University. Chris has written several textbooks on research including Doing a literature review (Sage/Open University) and Doing your masters dissertation (Sage). Recent publications include, The legacy of the Chicago school of sociology (2010), Talcott Parsons: theory, development, and applications, Essays examining the relevance of Parsonian theory in the 21st Century (2009), and Heroines and Heroes: symbolism, embodiment, narratives and identity (2008). He has been research director for a number of national and international projects funded by public and commercial organizations. In 2006, Chris was research director for the largest private study of a community of interest (fans) ever undertaken, covering the European trading zone, across 12 countries, five currencies and 800,000 respondents (funded by European motor manufacturers Mercedes, BMW and Audi). Chris is currently working on a number of books including an analysis of the landmark 1984 Apple MacIntosh commercial, Mrs Miniver and propaganda and a second edition of Doing a literature review. Chris may be contacted at: c.hart@chester.ac.uk
Undertaking a Literature Review
An Introduction for Postgraduate Researchers
in the Social Sciences and Humanities
Wednesday, 27th November, 2013,
Society For Research into Higher Education
Dr Christopher Hart, University of Chester
Literature Reviewing Workshop for Postgraduates
Posted: October 4, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentUndertaking a Literature Review
An Introduction for Postgraduate Researchers
in the Social Sciences and Humanities
29th November, 2012,
University of Chester, North West Media Centre
Dr Christopher Hart, University of Chester
This workshop is about doing a search and review of the literature for your research proposal and subsequent research project. The sessions will be a mix of showing and doing with the emphasis on doing and sharing. The aim is to present techniques for doing a literature review and look at these in terms of your own research needs.
Using the Researcher Development Framework (RDF), recently developed by Vitae, we will consider,
- how to map out the different sources and resources that can be used to find relevant research, ideas and theories
- how to limit the search and be efficient with time and focus intellectual effort
- examples of reviews, to look at what makes for a competent review, occasionally stopping on the way to think about methodological assumptions and their consequences
- the role of the research imagination, introducing some tools and techniques to unleash the creative researcher inside you
The session will be part talk, part demonstration and part hands-on, with plenty of time for questions and discussion about your research.
Chris Hart is currently at the University of Chester. He has held academic posts with Manchester, Salford, Birmingham City University and written learning materials for the Open University. Chris has written several textbooks on research including Doing a literature review (Sage/Open University) and Doing your masters dissertation (Sage). Recent publications include, The legacy of the Chicago school of sociology (2010), Talcott Parsons: theory, development, and applications, Essays examining the relevance of Parsonian theory in the 21st Century (2009), and Heroines and Heroes: symbolism, embodiment, narratives and identity (2008). He has been research director for a number of national and international projects funded by public and commercial organizations. In 2006, Chris was research director for the largest private study of a community of interest (fans) ever undertaken, covering the European trading zone, across 12 countries, five currencies and 800,000 respondents (funded by European motor manufacturers Mercedes, BMW and Audi). Chris is currently working on a number of books including an analysis of the landmark 1984 Apple MacIntosh commercial, Mrs Miniver and propaganda and a second edition of Doing a literature review. Chris may be contacted at: c.hart@chester.ac.uk
Undertaking a Literature Review
An Introduction for Postgraduate Researchers
in the Social Sciences and Humanities
29th November, 2012,
University of Chester, North West Media Centre
Dr Christopher Hart, University of Chester
Timetable:
10.30am – 11.00am Arrival and registration; refreshments available.
Pin up your poster (A4 sheets)
11.00am-12.45pm Undertaking a Literature Review
Information Literacy : A Test
Ponds or buildings?
Exercise 1: key texts are…?
Not all the glitters… (What Alan taught us)
Anyone for a good argument?
12.45pm-1.30pm Working Lunch and Networking (lunch provided by the
University of Chester)
Exercise 2: Creativity – dealing with risk, the ambiguous,
trusting intuition and visualizing alternatives.
1.30-2.30 Judging a review
Exercise 3: what are the criteria and how do we make them
work for us?
2.30pm-3.30pm Example reviews: applying the criteria
Exercise 4: the reviews you have read.
Group feedback.
Your plan – what you now need to go and do.
3.30pm Refreshments and Q&A session
4.00pm Event ends.
Preparation
Before coming along to the workshops we want you to prepare some basic information and read some reviews (these will be emailed to you and be available on the day).
On a sheet of A4 say who you are, what you are researching and why? State what problems you are facing doing your search and review of the literature. A prize will be given to the most creative and distinct sheet. All materials will be provided including a printed hand-out summarising the main points from the sessions.
Fee: £30.00 to include refreshments and materials.
To book a place email Dr Chris hart at c.hart@chester.ac.uk
Hello world!
Posted: April 20, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 CommentWelcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.
Here are some suggestions for your first post.
- You can find new ideas for what to blog about by reading the Daily Post.
- Add PressThis to your browser. It creates a new blog post for you about any interesting page you read on the web.
- Make some changes to this page, and then hit preview on the right. You can always preview any post or edit it before you share it to the world.
chris hart 