The Group for War and Culture Studies (GWACS), established in 1995, and the Journal of War and Culture Studies, seek to provide a forum for debate and the dissemination of knowledge about the relationships between war and culture in the 20th and 21st centuries, with an emphasis on cultural history and cultural production as significant forces that have shaped the experience, representation, and memory of war. The GWACS is international in scope, with some 200 scholars from 14 countries around the world.
Fostering inter-disciplinary work by specialists in cultural history, literary studies, and all forms of visual studies, as well as social sciences and social and political history, the GWACS organises two types of seminars. The GWACS Research Seminar Series is a forum for invited speakers to present their research projects in the form of lectures and discussions.The GWACS Art Conversations are informal conversations with artists, art critics, and curators about how war informs a wide range of cultural practices.
Web-site address: www.warandculturestudies.org.uk
Contacts:
Dr Caroline Perret, Research Associate, University of Westminster: French art, illustrated books, literature, and poetry in the historical, political, social and cultural context of WWII.
c.perret@westminster.ac.uk
Helena Scott, Editorial Coordinator of the Journal of War and Culture Studies.
h.scott@westminster
The GWACS Steering Group:
Professor Debra Kelly, University of Westminster: Responses of the Parisian avant-garde to WWI in the visual arts, poetry, the theatre, the novel and artistic and literary journals; the Free French in London in WWII.
Professor Nicola Cooper, University of Swansea: French colonialism, France’s colonial wars, and the French Foreign Legion; war and conflict studies in film, documentary, posters, propaganda, fiction, architecture, art, journalism, and photography.
Dr Martin Hurcombe, University of Bristol: French representations of the Spanish Civil War; political commitment and the memory of WWI in French literary and visual culture.