Rape in wartime: a history to be written
Date: 11 - 12 May 2009
Rapes committed during armed conflicts are often assumed to have a kind of inevitability. Over the last thirty years, the subject has been studied in a number of different disciplines. The aim of this conference is to promote rape in wartime as an historical subject. The intention is not to claim in advance that it constitutes either a supreme form of wartime violence or a forgotten one, but rather, by taking account of the actors, the actions and the occasions on which rape occurred, to pose the question of its place in war. The idea is also to chart the visibility of rape both at the time and afterwards. The question will be posed of how rape could on some occasions symbolize the entire conflict and summarize the atrocities for which the enemy was condemned while on other occasions it was passed over in silence by both the private and the public narratives of the war.
Details: Proposals should be a maximum of 2,500 characters (360 words) and should be sent with a short biographical note before 1 June 2008 to: rapeinwartime@univ-paris1.fr.
Conference organisers: R. Branche, I. Delpla, J. Horne, P. Lagrou, D. Palmieri, F. Virgili
Venue: University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
Email: rapeinwartime@univ-paris1.fr
Deadlines: Call for papers: 1 June 2008
