Lecture report: Madison (Wisconsin), December 2014

by Thulme Dec. 5, 2014 Comments

Pageantry and the portrayal of the First World War has become a major, and unexpected, area of our research. Over the first year of the project we've built up a solid foundation of pageants that featured either re-enactment of battles, or references to the conflict. Emerging from our analysis of these pageants is the idea that they were a nuanced and popular form of "collective remembrance" - the coming together of communities, and local ones especially, to remember and commemorate. Though they have not been recognised as such by other historians, pageants were as contemporaneously important as the poppy, the two-minute silence, or the physical war memorial. Emerging from an in depth study of war portrayal, we have begun to question and complicate the relationship between modernity and traditionalism in the interwar period, and the ability for ideals of patriotism and and duty to co-exist with opposition to militarism and sacrifice. We are even beginning to formulate an argument that sees pageants as a sort of social safety-valve mechanism; a cathartic release of emotion and grief for both veterans and the bereaved. In the next few months, we will be collaboratively working this research into a journal article - available in all good online paywalled research repositories near you SOON. In the meantime, see some of my other thoughts on this topic here, here, here, and... here.

We've also started to present these ideas in seminar series. Mark gave a paper derived from the research at the Institute of Historical Research History of Education Seminar yesterday, while, several thousand miles away, I gave a lecture at the University of Wisconsin in Madison - thanks to Daniel Ussisshkin for the invite, and the Center for European Studies, the History Department, and the Mosse programme for organising the trip and looking after me! Held as part of an undergraduate course on "The First World War and the Shaping of Twentieth Century History", as well as being open to the public, I was struck with the nuance and depth of the questions put to me by the audience (of about 30-40 people). Students and others asked: whether re-enactment for entertainment could be seen as a trivialisation of war; what was the role of empire in pageants and the portrayal of imperial soldiers; whether pageantry was used (or misused) by political parties or movements; about the use of Christian iconography in pageants; and how commemoration in Britain differed from Europe. All of these questions got to the heart of the issue of pageantry's relationship to both war and post-war society, and thinking about the answers is giving us lots of "food for thought" for honing our arguments - not least the final question, which left me completely stumped (more reading required!).

Madison is a small but fun city, and I thoroughly enjoyed my stay; I look forward to coming back sometime in the near future. Perhaps next time, though, not in the depths of winter - though Daniel assures me that -2 degrees Celsius is positively balmy for this time of year!

Wisconsin Lecture

Lecture in Wisconsin

Thanks to Daniel Ussishkin for taking these pictures and allowing me to use them on this blog post.

Tom Hulme

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