International conference on the peoples of the South Pacific (Oceania) in the First World War

A conference examining the role of the South Pacific in the First World War will be held at Amiens (France) from 17 to 19 April 2014. A second meeting at Rochefort (France) from 27 to 29 May 2014 will focus on moving images, as an introduction to the Festival of South Pacific Cinema.
The conference, The Peoples of the South Pacific (Oceania) in the First World War: Nation, Nationalism and the Sense of Belonging, seeks to bring together researchers (both established scholars and doctoral students) around new approaches to the South Pacific and to contribute to interdisciplinary cooperation and exchanges.
The conference will re-assess the role of the South Pacific in this conflict, taking into account both the indigenous populations of the islands and the migrants and colonists, some of whom left this geographical space only for the period of the war. What the inhabitants of the South Pacific remember of their share of the war will also be examined.
A second section of the conference will deal with the impact and the use of the First World War for constructing the identity of the islands and societies of the South Pacific during the period from 1914 to 2014. Can the First World War be seen as a historical and anchorage, signalling the beginning of a new era? The role of the First World War in the establishment of a sense of belonging and the nationalism of the islands will be of special interest.
Another part of the conference is devoted to the heritage of the First World War in Oceania, its importance in the changes the region underwent and the meaning attributed to that event as well as the variations in the construction of national identity. Sources of discussion might be signs and symbols and symbolic representations associated with Oceania, the politics of the memorial image and the “political use of the past”, the aesthetics of physical memory and of the construction of identity and memory-based tourism.
Finally, the place of the South Pacific in the First World War will be examined through cultural productions between 1914 and 2018. Literature, animated pictures or fixed images or language phenomena also help to describe the war effort of the South Pacific in its cultural manifestations.
The focus of the conference is on Oceania in the war, rather than the war itself. The construction of national identities and national myths (political, social, cultural and even economic) and the contribution the intellectual (literary, artistic) and political fields might have made to it, will be forefront. In the words of Françoise Vergès, the purpose is not the “pious invocation of memory but a writing of history open to reinterpretations, rediscoveries, re-readings”.
The call for papers for the conference closed in September 2013, and papers wil be circulated prior to the meeting. There is no registration fee. Accommodation costs and meals will be covered by the conference organisers. Researchers whose travelling expenses are not covered by their home institution can apply for support to [email protected]
For more information, visit the conference website.
Read the conference outline
Download the conference programme (PDF, 2MB)