Encountering the other in wartime: the Great War as an intercultural moment?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis guest-edited special issue aims to investigate the First World War as an intercultural moment. The Centenary brought a better understanding to this topic through several research projects.The Other is first and foremost the enemy. However, the Great War was also a time of unprecedented intermingling and circulation within the coalitions. Metropolitan and colonial soldiers, civilian workers, refugees and displaced persons left their familiar frame of reference by the millions. The conflict thus also constituted a change of scene for good or bad, a confrontation with social and cultural otherness, with different landscapes, at all scales for the belligerent societies (empires, nation states, local communities). The conference held by the Society for First World War Studies in Paris in 2013 about the Other in wartime aimed to bring into light new perspectives about the conflict. In this perspective, transnational and comparative approaches were encouraged.