War Welfare and Gender Politics in the First World War. Regional and global dimensions

 

Graz cooperation partner: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil Heidrun Zettelbauer, Institute of History
Junior Fellow: Mag. Viktoria Wind

Incoming Senior Fellow: Univ.-Prof. Ingrid Sharp, University of Leeds, School of Languages, Cultures and Societies (UK)
Incoming Junior Fellows: Chantal Sullivan-Thomsett, Louise Earnshaw

Period: January 2021 to December 2025
Symposium: December 9/10, 2021

Content:

The project deals with gender politics in local and global dimensions during the First World War. A particular focus is on the areas of welfare and war care and the associated gender-specific rhetoric and practices. The aim is to analyze discourses on gender, war and violence, their patterns and political functions. The focus is on processes of de- and restabilization of gender in war and their connection to discourses of (war) violence.

In terms of content, the project ranges from the investigation of explicitly politically positioned female actors (peace movement, women's suffrage movement, etc.) to the analysis of explicitly anti-democratic war welfare policies under the leadership and participation of protagonists from the nationalist-German or Catholic-conservative milieu. In particular, the focus is on specific negotiations of gendered concepts of citizenship.

From a geographical perspective, both regional contexts (Habsburg Monarchy, German Empire) and global aspects of the topic are discussed. The First World War as the first "global" and first "total war" lends itself to exploring how experiences of war and violence fundamentally affect the cultural constitution of societies and what role gender plays in this.