Jahrestagung 2010

Unthinking the Imaginary War. Intellectual Reflections of the Nuclear Age, 1945-1990

Conference at the German Historical Institute London, 4 November - 6 November 2010
jointly organised by the Centre for Peace History,
University of Sheffield, and the Arbeitskreis für Historische Friedensforschung,
in collaboration with the German Historical Institute London and the German Historical Institute Rome

 

 

Thursday, 4 November 2010
2pm: Opening and Welcome, Andreas Gestrich (GHI London)
2.15-2.30pm: Patrick Bernhard (GHI Rome), Holger Nehring (Sheffield), Benjamin Ziemann (Sheffield): Introduction
2.30-4.30pm:
Panel I: Long-Term Perspectives on the Nuclear Threat
David Tal (Calgary), The Wilsonian Heritage and US Nuclear Disarmament Policy
Matthew Grant (Manchester), The Atomic Sensation in British Culture
Deborah Sorrenti (Rome), Italian Political Approaches to the Nuclear Menace

4.30-5pm: Coffee Break
5.00-6.30pm: Keynote Lecture: Paul Boyer (Madison, Wisconsin), Fallout. American Thought and Culture in the Nuclear Age
6.30pm: Conference Dinner at the GHI London
 

Friday, 5 November 2010
9am-12noon:
Panel II: Nuclear Apocalypse
Miriam Dobson (Sheffield), Apocalypse, Peace, and Religious Belief: Soviet Representations of the Cold War
Daniel Gerster (Florence), West German and US Catholics, the Bomb and Perceptions of Apocalypse, 1945-1960
Johannes Platz (Cologne), The Atomic Age – War, Peace and Apocalypse. The Views of the German Protestant Military Bishop
Friederike Brühöfener (Chapel Hill), “Angst vor dem Atom”. Debating Cold War Anxieties in West Germany during the 1980s

12-1pm: Lunch
1-3pm:
Panel III: Dialectics of Destruction: Imaginations of the Bomb
Jason Dawsey (Chicago), After Hiroshima. Günther Anders and the History of Anti-Nuclear Critique
Patryk Wasiak (Warschau), Good Human versus Computer Villain: New Technologies and the Discourse of Nuclear War
Lars Nowak (Trier) Rehearsals for the Third World War: The American Nuclear Test Films

3-3.30pm Coffee Break
3.30-6.30pm:
Panel IV: Expert Cultures: Defense Intellectuals and Peace Researchers 
Claudia Kemper (Hamburg), Physicians as Experts. The German Section of IPPNW
Isabelle Miclot (Paris), French Defense Intellectuals and the Modeling of Nuclear War
Eva Fetscher/Øyvind Ekelund (Oslo), Norwegian Peace Research and the Bomb, 1959-1990
Paul Rubinson (Tampa), “The Nuclear Winter Phenomenon”: Antinuclear Protests and Human Rights in the US and the Soviet Union

Saturday, 6 November 2010
9.30am-12.30pm:
Panel V: Imagining the Unimaginable: Artists and the Bomb
Vera Wolff (Hamburg), Material Aesthetics for the Nuclear Age. How Japanese Artists undid the Imaginary War
Umberto Rossi (Rome), The War which was not There: Images of World War III in Novels by Philip K. Dick and Thomas Pynchon
Thomas F. Schneider (Osnabrück), Armageddon and After. Representations of Post Nuclear Societies in Cold War Films

12.30-2pm Lunch
2-3.30pm: Thematic Wrap-Up, introduced by Michael Geyer (Chicago) / Eva Horn (Vienna) / Jost Dülffer 

Co-Organizers:
Centre for Peace History, University of Sheffield (http://www.peacehistory.dept.shef.ac.uk/)
Arbeitskreis für Historische Friedensforschung (http://www.akhf.de/)
German Historical Institute London (http://www.ghil.ac.uk/)
German Historical Institute Rome (http://www.dhi-roma.it/)