Not So Quiet on the Eastern Front: A Seminar Report from the Trenches of the 37th Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association

Abstract

Not So Quiet on the Eastern Front:A Seminar Report from the Trenches of the 37th Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association Heather R. Perry, Emre Sencer, and John W. Steinberg In recent years, scholars seem to have rediscovered the “Eastern Front” of World War I in Europe. For nearly a century, the history and cultural study of Europe’s Great War has focused on the Western Front. From books about trench warfare, technological innovation, and total war to analyses of war poetry, novels, and paintings created by veterans (Remarque, Dix, Grosz) to studies of POWs and forced labor—the war as it was planned, fought, experienced, and lost between France, England, and Germany has been at the center of scholarship dealing with the Central Powers in World War I. Since the turn of the twentieth century, however, there has been growing interest in the war beyond the Western Front and scholars have been examining the war experiences of soldiers and civilians not only in the east, but also around the globe. The approaching centenary of the Great War has only magnified this interest as governments and the popular media work to refine the memory and contemporary meaning of this war for themselves, their citizens, and their consumers. Thus it comes as no surprise that scholars in German Studies, too, have been busy uncovering new stories about the impact of the war, the experiences of Central Europeans in it, and the larger significance of all of this not just to Germanophone Europe but to the wider world. When the German Studies Association announced its intention to introduce a new scholarly component to the 37th Annual Meeting taking place in Denver, Colorado (October 3–6, 2013), we immediately saw its potential as both the ideal venue for bringing together some of the scholars who are producing this new research on the history and culture of Central Europe during World War I while also providing a timely opportunity for furthering progress on a volume of essays which we are currently editing. With this idea in mind, we submitted a proposal for a seminar entitled, Not So Quiet on the Eastern Front: New Directions in WWI Studies, to the GSA Seminar Working Group for consideration in their pilot program. Our goal was to use the [End Page 377] seminar as a place where graduate students and junior scholars from around the globe could discuss their research on World War I with recognized experts in the field. Such a format, we hoped, would create a discussion among scholars who find the more traditional paper presentation panel to be less engaging and fruitful for the kind of feedback they seek. At the same time, we wanted to target part of the seminar’s focus on recent innovative research on the war’s Eastern Front. This less well-studied aspect of the Central Powers’ experience of the war against Imperial Russia forms the basis of our forthcoming book in the multi-volume project, Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914–1922 (Slavica, in preparation).1 The new seminar format could function as an ideal space to workshop the volume, we hoped. Seminar Background The idea of creating a new forum for the discussion and dissemination of scholarship stemmed primarily from the desire to create a more conversational space at the German Studies Association annual meeting that could simultaneously accommodate more than three to four perspectives on a topic. Since 2000, it has become commonplace to organize series of panels to showcase scholarship organized around specific themes and trends. These panel series have had the advantage of bringing together scholars across disciplines to engage their subjects more deeply; and, over the years it has become increasingly common to use the annual meeting as a place where scholars dispersed around the globe can gather together for such “mini conferences.” As useful as this phenomenon has been in allowing lengthier conversations among some scholars, this arrangement has had the disadvantage of isolating the participants of these “mini conferences” by effectively siloing them for the duration of the conference within a small group of scholars. Attending all six (or eight, even ten) panels within such a series can prevent...