Following last night’s monologue performance of Futurist manifestos, the French and Italian department will kick off a conference commemorating the upcoming centennial of World War I this afternoon. The conference examines the war’s political and cultural ramifications from a breadth of perspectives.
Along with celebrating the anniversary, conference organizers aimed to draw international experts on the war to Dartmouth, said French and Italian department chair Graziella Parati.
Titled “Specters of the Great War: France, Italy and the First World War Conference,” the conference includes six panels, with two or three speakers of different disciplines presenting on each topic, French professor Lucas Hollister said.
Panel topics include modernism and World War I, cultural politics, war and trauma, the role of the colonies and the French and Italian fronts.
Hollister, who will chair two panels, said the decision to organize the discussions by broad themes reflects the conference’s interest in addressing big, interdisciplinary issues surrounding the war.
Often, knowledge about World War I is lost in the attention paid to World War II, Hollister said, adding that he hopes the conference will raise campus awareness of the Great War’s impact across disciplines.
This afternoon, author Mark Thompson will deliver a keynote address on the dilemmas of commemoration in Italy.
Tomorrow, Brandeis University history professor Paul Jankowski will deliver a speech titled “An Icon of the War and its Paradoxes: Verdun.”
African and African-American studies professor Reena Goldthree, the only speaker from the College, will discuss race and the colonies’ role in the war as part of a panel Friday afternoon.
The conference also includes a showing of the French war film “Le Grande Illusion” (1937), directed by Jean Renoir, which tells the story of two French soldiers in a German prisoner-of-war camp. The Hopkins Center will screen the film at 4 p.m. on Saturday.
The main hall of Baker Library will feature an exhibit of French and Italian perspectives of World War I through the end of the term, showcasing war materials ranging from medals to a German navy officer’s jacket, Rauner librarian Morgan Swan said. The displays will also contain war maps, posters and examples of propaganda.
“We wanted to have an exhibit that would try to represent perspectives on the war from Italian and French viewpoints,” Swan said. “Most people in the U.S. think about World War I from the American perspective, and we are trying to give people a perspective they aren’t used to seeing.”
