Arts and Humanities Commons^™

4b1: Recalling The Trenches From The Club Window: Contrasting Perspectives In Dorothy Sayers And P.G. Wodehouse, Laura Fiss

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957) and P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) provide contrasting approaches to the aftermath of World War I within British middlebrow fiction. Both, however, use the institution of London social clubs for gentlemen as a tool for thinking through the consequences of the war for the Victorian social order. Despite its origins in late-seventeenth-century coffeehouses and chocolate houses, the club saw great growth and solidification in the Victorian period, in part as a buttress against the increasing forces of social democratization (Reform, Emancipation, and growing rights for women, for instance). In the last decades of the nineteenth century, the New …

4b3: ‘This Mad Brute’: Postwar Male Violence And The Pathological Public Sphere, Rebecca Frost

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

War provides a space for state-sponsored expressions of violence encouraged – or at least allowed – within the public sphere. During WWI, returning soldiers were welcomed and generally hailed as heroes, especially in comparison with more recent conflicts. Men on the front lines were faced not only with rifles, machine guns, and mortars, but also the effects of poison gas. Such violence and images of ripped and torn bodies were an expected part of a soldier’s life. This daily exposure and indeed the mass media reports on what was happening on the front play into Mark Seltzer’s pathological public sphere …

4b2: Men, Military, And The Law: An Examination Of Conscription During World War I And Its Legal Challenges, Victoria Stewart

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

As in the case of the American Civil War, conscription was implemented during World War I to serve the military needs of the nation. As voluntary enlistment had again decreased, the US Congress responded with another conscription bill to institute another federally controlled system of conscription to require the service of America’s male population. Republican Representative Julius Kahn introduced the Selective Service Act. A conscription call, and registration for conscription, would be a joint effort by the US Congress and President Woodrow Wilson. The members of Congress, that supported conscription, expressed their belief that men were required to serve the …

4a1: The Great War And Modern Homosexuality: Transatlantic Crossings, Chet Defonso

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

World War I had a deep impact upon the development of gender relationships in the Western World, and was especially significant in the way that it fostered the development of homosocial and homosexual identities among its participants. Many men and women who were involved in the war effort formed profoundly deep emotional and physical same-gender relationships that were perceived either at the time or later as homosexual. Observers and participants alike have attested that World War I encouraged a kind of incipient “gay solidarity” among some of its survivors - for example the British war poets such as Siegfried Sassoon …

3a2: American Chemical Companies: World War I And Beyond, Jason Szilagyi

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

The First World War created a relationship between the United States military and American chemical manufacturers that would have an enormous influence on how private companies impacted both the civilian and military lifestyles over the next century. By the time the United States entered the conflict, the government had already asked many companies to shift towards weapons production.

The relationship between private business and war has a long pedigree in military history. Companies were contracted to produce clothes, boots, weapons, food, and medicine in order to keep a nation’s military on the battlefield. With the world-spanning scale of the Great …

3b2: The Allied Expositionary Forces: From Encouragement To Commemoration Of Wwi, Steven A. Walton

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

Most people pass war memorials in their own town or while on the road with relatively little thought, though likely with reverence for those that include soldiers names of those who died or perhaps excitement and pride for those that include military hardware, such as cannon, aircraft, or tanks. Some may see trophies in particular and smile with patriotic/nationalistic pride or frown with disapproval (also patriotic in its won way). War memorials and trophies can be found in town squares and city halls, cemeteries, airports, at and VFW or Legion halls. Each combination of statue or trophy, with or without …

3b1: ‘Your Duty On Display’: The Allied War Exhibition In Chicago, The State Council Of Defense, And The Role Of The State In Defining American Identity, Josh Fulton

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

Held in Chicago from September 2-15, 1918; the Allied War Exhibition represented the apogee of public patriotism and state activism on the homefront during the [rst world war. Overseen by the State Council of Defense of Illinois, the event brought together federal, state and local government agencies, private organizations and citizens groups to give Chicagoans a chance not only to see soldiers re-enact battles, but learn the myriad of ways in which they could contribute to the war effort. Founded in Chicago the year before, the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI) provided war films displayed nightly, and curated much …

3b3: Wwi Propaganda Poster Fluidity, Sarah Price

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

This paper will reUect a summer's work with Dr. Jessy Ohl at the University of Alabama, digitizing, analyzing, and dissecting a newly discovered collection of 130 World War I propaganda posters in the University of Alabama special collections This summer, we will be developing an immersive, multi-media platform in order to illustrate the full historical context and consciousness surrounding these images. For this paper, we will focus on the narrative of androgyny created through the representations within these posters, looking specifically at the fluidity of gender created by the shifting of professions, and the depictions of men and women within …

3a1: Electrical Communications Impacts During The Great War And Impacts On The Interwar Period, Martha Sloan

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

Technologies often change more rapidly during wars than during peacetime, as evidenced in the first half of the twentieth century. While the nineteenth century had seen major developments in mechanical engineering with the steam engine and its impact on industries and transportation, the twentieth century became the electrical century, notably for improved communications. Telephone and telegraph, established in the nineteenth century, were effective in WWI, a static war in which fixed lines and telegraph sufficed for connections between trenches, and telephones and telegraph for status reports or orders among military organizations. As the role of aviation changed from spotting to …

2a2: 'Lest We Forget': Remembering World War I In Wisconsin, 1919-1945, Leslie Bellais

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

Wisconsin had a rough few years during World War I. By the summer of 1917, newspaper editors from around the country questioned the state’s patriotism and even labeled it a “traitor state.” This reputation chagrined scores of Wisconsin’s prominent men and many of them immediately took to avenging the state’s name. They knew why their state looked like a potential hotbed of treason from afar: outspoken national representatives from the state, especially Senator Robert La Follette, had taken unpatriotic stances regarding the war, its significant Socialist population had not backed President Wilson or Congress’s declaration of war, and a politically …

2b1: An American Abroad: Perceptions Of Americans In Buchan's Wwi Thriller, Greenmantle, Peter Faziani

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

This talk will examine John Buchan’s presentation of American involvement in his World War I adventure novels, specifically his 1916 Greenmantle, to demonstrate that Buchan’s popular novels reinforced a notion of ideological power of Americans as uninvolved in the First World War. Considered the precursor to modern spy and thriller fiction, Buchan’s adventures often found British amateur spy, Richard Hannay, in the thick of some mysterious war-time plot to attack England. In his second Hannay novel, Greenmantle, Buchan’s plot is taken to Turkey to successfully decipher the code of Greenmantle after failing to prevent the on-set of the First World …

1a3: Population, The Lessons Of War, And The Promise Of Peace, Kathleen Tobin

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, new teachings on Malthusianism emerged. These were founded on the Essays on Population (1798-1826) by Thomas Malthus, which warned that while population grew geometrically the earth’s resources grew only arithmetically. As a result, overpopulation was inevitable and could be checked only by famine, disease, or war. He did not advocate birth control, but by 1900 many others did. Between 1900 and 1914, neo-Malthusians and birth control activists joined efforts and much of their work reacted on growing militarism in Western Europe and the United States. They continued to write during the …

1b3: Propaganda As Public Relations Antecedent: The Complex Legacy Of The Creel Commission, Christopher Mccollough

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

Scholars have documented the impact of the Creel Commission on modern war correspondence (Lippmann, 1922; St. John, 2009a, 2009b, 2011), military censorship (Lippmann, 1922, Gitlin, 1986), political communication (Bernays, 1923, 1928), advertising (Bernays, 1942; Collins, 1993, 2001), and modern public relations (DeSanto, 2000; Myers, 2015). Their efforts in propaganda helped reposition public opposition to public support for the American War effort and for the Armistice from 1916-1919 through the use of print media, music, art, and other popular sources of information, entertainment, and culture of the period. Edward Bernays (1923, 1928) discusses the inauence of his work as part of …

1a1: Conflicted Loyalties: Austro-Hungarian Immigrants In Michigan And The Great War, Robert Goodrich

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

On 1 July 1918, US Army PFC Mario Ruconich of 2^nd Division, 23^rd Infantry Regiment, Company L was killed by German machine gun fire near the village of Vaux, France. He had volunteered for the US Army in January 1917, mustering at the Columbus Barracks in Ohio, where he listed his home as Michigan. His military service record listed his nationality as “Austrian.” PFC Ruconich’s three older brothers also died, or were POWs. Yet they fought for the Central Powers as loyal Austrians on the Italian and Russian Fronts. The Ruconich family spoke Istriot (an Italian dialect) and …

1b2: A Heartland Artist As Prisoner: The End Of Guy Brown Wiser's Air War, Doug Lantry

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

This presentation considers cultural representations of war through analysis of Guy Brown Wiser’s vibrant and colorful Zrsthand chronicle of a particular American Great War aviation experience—that of a pilot shot down and taken prisoner—preserved in 40 watercolor sketches at the National Museum of the United States Air Force (NMUSAF). Brought down in the late summer of 1918, Wiser recorded his captivity with humor and insight, visually juxtaposing Midwest-American and German sensibilities, and contrasting the casual U.S. aviator image against the “stiff German.” The Indiana native’s sketchbook serves as a rare record of WWI prisoner life brought to life by a …

Complete Program - Armistice & Aftermath: A World War One Symposium, Michigan Technological University

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

View the PDF of the complete program for Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium.

The Armistice that ended the “Great War” remains a marker of hope, change, sacrifice, and struggle. Armistice Day 2018 marks the centenary end of World War I. This symposium explores the conditions and impacts of the Great War as experienced during and afterward, with a special focus on the perspective from the American Heartland and featuring diverse reflections on the cultural, political, and technological experiences and legacies of WWI.

Complete Proceedings - Armistice & Aftermath: A World War One Symposium, Michigan Technological University

Proceedings of Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium

View the PDF of the complete proceedings for Armistice & Aftermath: A World War I Symposium.

We are pleased to bring together many of the papers presented at the Michigan Tech World War I symposium, Armistice & Aftermath. They provide various examples of how WWI affected the heartland, both during and after the war – a topic often missed in general histories, at least in the United States. American stories of WWI are relatively scarce in relation to general American military history, where the Civil War and WWII dominate, and in relation to WWI histories, which are dominated by the …