Editorial: War! What is it good for? The work of the Group for War and Culture Studies

Abstract

This founding issue of the Journal of War and Culture Studies is another milestone in the development of the work of the Group for War and Culture Studies (GWACS) established at the University of Westminster, London in 1995.1 The original aim of the Group was broadly to undertake and promote research into the relationships between war and culture, and its focus was France and Francophone countries in the twentieth century, as the idea for the research group took form in a French department in a School of Languages. France provides a particularly complex and fascinating case-study for an investigation into the impact of war on cultural production and cultural history, having been at war for almost 50 years of the twentieth century, with radically different experiences and memories of the two world wars, and still living with the legacies of brutal colonial wars. An understanding of the impact that the experience of these different types of war has made on French cultural, social and political identity is essential if we are to analyze the developments in that country throughout the twentieth century, and indeed its role in European and world affairs. The approaches developed by the Group and its participating scholars in its research seminars, conferences and publications focusing on France formed the working methods for the future as its focus expanded in later years. The Group’s place of origin in an academic environment of literary, linguistic and cultural studies, rather than in a department of history, is essential to the approaches and methodologies of the Group in its analysis of the impact that war has had on various forms of cultural production.