Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates, History Department, NUI Maynooth
12th Annual Conference
8-10 May 2014
Call for Papers
This international conference will be devoted to the impact of the Great War on the country house across Europe between 1914 and 1918. Owners, servants, estate workers and tenants responded in a variety of ways: men were sent away to fight, women volunteered as nurses, and houses were requisitioned. Often the impact of war was more powerfully felt at home in the form of anxiety, uncertainty, and bereavement, and these experiences cut across social strata.
Papers are invited from academics and independent scholars on any aspect of this topic, which might include:
• Enlistment, recruitment and conscription
• Military requisition or destruction of properties
• The fighting front and the home front
• Bereavement and injury
• The economic and political impact upon country houses and estates
• The disintegration of social hierarchies
• The representation of war in letters, memoirs and literature
• Archival sources for understanding the effect of war in these communities
• The role of women
• The concepts of duty and loyalty
• Science and medicine
• Land, agriculture and diet
This conference is the first in a series to be held by the CSHIHE between 2014 and 2018 marking the period 1914-18 when the country house experienced unprecedented social, political and economic upheaval throughout Europe. Future conference titles can be found at: www.historicirishhouses.ie