International Conference
Front lines: the faces of Great War
Call for papers
organized by
THE FRESNES-EN-WOËVRE TOWNSHIP COMMUNITY OF COMMONS
16 May 2014 thorough the international literary festival
“Le Printemps du Grand Meaulnes” at SAINT-REMY-LA-CALONNE
(Meuse – France)
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
Nadège MARIOTTI, University of Lorraine, IRCAV, University Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris
Marie-France PAQUIN, University of Lorraine
Jean-Claude HUMBERT, Président of the Fresnes-en-Woëvre township Community of Commons
Fresnes-en-Woëvre township Community of Commons Historical Society
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Colonel ARTISSON, Meuse General Council historical Mission manager
Claire ASLANGUL, Senior Lecturer, University Sorbonne , Paris 4, IRICE
Thérèse BLONDET-BISCH, artist/painter, in charge of the pictures collections of BDIC
Jacques GRASSER, graduated history teacher, deputy major (culture) of Epinal town
Colonel PIERSON (e.r), Director of the Verdun Mémorial
Jean-Pierre PUTON, Director of the Lorraine Image Center (CIL) Nancy
Laurent VERAY, Professor, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, IRCAV, Paris ; artistic director of the Compiègne film festival.
Contacts
nadege.mariotti@univ-lorraine.fr
marie-france.paquin@univ-lorraine.fr
1914, the Great War
“(…) The large pale sky filled up with thunders: each explosion raises at once, falling from a red flash, a fire column in the rest of the night and a cloudy column in that there are already of a day. Up there, high, far away, a flock of terrible birds with a powerful and jerky breath, we hear without seeing them, riding in a circle to watch the earth.
The earth! The desert begins to appear, huge and full of water, among the long desolation of dawn. Ponds, funnels, the sharp wind of the extreme morning clips and sends shivers down the spine of water; tracks plotted by the troops and nighty convoys in these fields of infertility that are ribbed by ruttings, shining like steel rails in the poor light; piles of mud where rise up here and there some broken poles, X trestles, dislocated, packets of rolled iron wire, twisted in bushes. With its mud banks and puddles, it seems to be a disproportionate gray cloth floating on the sea, surrounded by places. It’s not raining, but everything is wet, oozing, washed, wrecked, and the dim light seems to flow.
We distinguish long ditches sculpted in a web pattern, where the night residue accumulates. Here is the trench. The bottom is covered with a viscous layer where the foot comes off at every step with noise and which smells around each shelter, because of the nighty urine. The holes themselves, if one have a look while walking, are stinking too, like mouths.
I see shadows emerging from these lateral schafts, and moving, huge and shapeless masses of bear species which struggles and growls. This is us. “
So said Henri Barbusse, one of the first writers to relate the unspeakable from an inside perceived war.
2014..!
One century later the shells have plowed the land, what do we know? What are the meaning traces of a wounded landscape, crushed under the firepower of shells? What do we know of these bruised body steeped in the mud of the Meuse trenches?
What gives us meaning the effigies of these areas? Slices of life, death space, territory frozen in its depths forever, one hundred years later, the front line continues continues to resonate for each of us.
“From July 14th 2014, a national billboard campaign will remember the shock of the announcement of the 1914 summer engagement. The faces of women and men, French and foreign, seized by mobilization and its immediate consequences will be posted on the whole territory, recalling the magnitude of this event […]. “
Third highlight of official commemorations, it is now essential to reflect on this territory which from the Atlantic to the blue line of the Vosges was the death knell of a world.
Frontline, bruised landscape of a time when everything changes in the ephemeral, this conference will aim to focus attention on the faces of the First World War, from the trace of battles to the mangled bodies, all that makes memory beyond the layers of time and the depths of oblivion.
Enter this time in the fourth literary Printemps du Grand Meaulnes festival, whose theme this year will focus on “ Charles Peguy “ was formed last year and is even stronger today a deliberate choice, it offers the possibility of link various interventions proposed a major event across the region : the writers of the Great War.
This international conference, the second held in the center of this front line, follows the initial project of classification as heritage and enhancement of an iconic site where traces of life and death of the fighters still stigmatizing the landscape scarred by blood and weapons are always submitted to the proof of time and show, if any, the signs of their inexorable disappearance.
• Traces and landscapes of the Great War;
• Faces and mangled bodies of the Great War;
• faces from the front line, faces of the rear;
• well-known and unknown faces;
• Some words for disorders;
• Front line Landscapes and heritage.
These will be the main topics discussed during this day.
Proposals
Lecturers shall send an abstract of their paper with about 500 words and a short CV to nadege.mariotti@univ-lorraine.fr and thus before January 10th 2014. They will receive a reply from the Scientific Committee on January 30th.
Languages for papers: French, English, German.
Lecture time: 20 minutes.
Dates and venues of the event: Friday, May 16th, 2014, St. Remy la Calonne (Meuse) laundry
Proceedings: Publication considered.