{"id":88,"date":"2014-09-16T14:14:55","date_gmt":"2014-09-16T18:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/?p=88"},"modified":"2014-09-16T14:18:56","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T18:18:56","slug":"literature-memory-and-the-first-world-war-the-west-point-conference-on-the-first-world-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/2014\/09\/16\/literature-memory-and-the-first-world-war-the-west-point-conference-on-the-first-world-war\/","title":{"rendered":"“Literature, Memory, and the First World War:” The West Point Conference on the First World War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I attended a conference, \u201cLiterature, Memory, and the First World War,\u201d that was held at the United States Military Academy, West Point,<\/a> New York, from 11 \u2013 14 September 2014.
\nThose who know me know that I am not by any stretch of the imagination a military historian, and that my interests lie in popular literatures, particularly science fiction, fantasy, weird fiction, and the pulp magazines, but often these supposedly escapist literatures deal with or involve serious affairs, and in the early twentieth century, this occurred following the Battle of Mons, the first battle of the First World War to involve the British Expeditionary Forces and the Germans. When I learned that West Poi nt would be hosting the conference, I sent in proposal. To my surprise, this proposal — \u201c\u2019The Battle of Mons\u2019\u201d and The Angels of Mons: The First Literary Reaction to the First Battle of the First World War and Its Aftermath\u201d \u2013 was accepted for the section devoted to \u201cMyth Making and Lies\u201d and scheduled for 8:30 on Saturday morning.
\nI arrived on Friday and attended several sessions, hearing papers about such issues as the different treatments of the First World War in motion pictures made during the war and after the war. In addition, I had lively and informative discussions with several of the panelists about memorials and commemorative literatures, and I was likewise pleased to encounter a number of UConn Graduate Students. (The First World War is one of Professor Margaret Higonnet<\/a>\u2019s areas of specialization, and her work is very highly regarded.)
\nOn Saturday morning I gave my presentation. Although three panelists had been scheduled, one had cancelled at the last minute, and I was thus paired with Professor Steve Lukits<\/a> of the Royal Military College of Canada<\/a>. He spoke on \u201c\u2019They that Have Power to Hurt and Will Do None:\u201d Lying in the Literature of the Great War.\u201d We worked well together. The panel\u2019s moderator was Major Sean Case<\/a> of West Point\u2019s Department of English and Philosophy. \u00a0Nothing seemed to faze him, and when the projector’s remote control failed at the last moment, he operated it manually so that I was able to show the PowerPoint slides I had prepared.
\nMy presentation provided a brief history of Mons and the disastrous (for the English) battle that was fought there on 24 and 25 August 1914. I then discussed novelist-turned-journalist Arthur Machen and described how his short story, \u201cThe Bowmen,\u201d published in The Evening News<\/em> on 29 September 1914, created an alternative narrative for the English, one in which they may have been overwhelmed but also were under the protection of St. George, whose ghostly archers prevented the Germans from destroying the English army. This counter-narrative became widely popular, and I described some of the responses. When Machen protested and tried to reclaim his narrative as pure fiction, I presented a variety of the disbelieving responses to his assertions. Finally, I presented a possible explanation and a conclusion for the popularity that can be defended but not substantiated. (All of this material is derived from a work in progress.)
\nThe audience \u2013 I estimate there were between 30 \u2013 40 people \u2013 were very interested, and the ensuing discussions were lively and enthusiastic. Professor Lukits and I responded to a number of questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I attended a conference, \u201cLiterature, Memory, and the First World War,\u201d that was held at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York, from 11 \u2013 14 September 2014. Those who know me know that I am … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4QWZD-1q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/96"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/professionaldevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}