Panel Summary:

Thirty years of twentieth century total war not only reshaped European political boundaries, but also raised questions of belonging when the boundaries of the state (and perhaps the nation) were at risk.  These papers aim to analyze how ideas about identity (national, class, gender) were affected by the experience and settlement of war.  Each paper tracks the fallout of war through shifting national boundaries and the resulting reformation of citizenship categories. We ask three central questions: How does the experience of war affect ideas about nationality and citizenship?  Does the experience of war vary based on belonging to certain class, racial, gender, and/or national groups?  And to what extent are citizens and subjects made instrumental categories in the settlement of war and the negotiation and execution of peace?

Participating Authors

Shannon Monaghan is a Ph.D. student in the History Department at Boston College.  Her research focuses on transnational and transcultural modern European history, with a particular interest in the First World War and interwar period.  She is currently researching population engineering in western Europe by the victor powers of the First World War.

Alexandria Ruble is a Ph.D student in the History Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include modern German and European, women's and gender, and political history.

Elise Franklin is a third year PhD student in the History department at Boston College. She studies postwar French gender and intellectual history, with a specific emphasis on the Algerian war and the efforts of French and Algerian women in the struggle.

Mate Rigo is a Ph.D. student in the History Department at Cornell University. His research interests include social, economic and urban history of Europe in the first half of the 20th century. He currently works on a project that compares social and political transition in Alsace-Lorraine and Transylvania after World War I.