'Two Centuries of Peacemaking' conference, 7 and 8 June 2016

We are delighted to announce details of the ‘Two Centuries of Peacemaking’ conference, which will be held at Newcastle University and Northumbria University on 7 and 8 June. This event asks big questions about the direction and vitality of the peace movement over 200 years. It is a forum where scholars and activists will reflect on the past, present and future of the peace movement. Participants will consider the shifts that occurred in the peace movement, addressing issues such as conscientious objection and the importance of feminist/women’s activist roles, the geographical and historical coordinates and influence of the civil rights movement, King’s distinctive nonviolence, global peace movements, and much more.

We are organising this conference as 2016 is an anniversary year that encourages us to contemplate our understanding of peace and the paths towards it. Firstly, it is the centenary of Britain’s enactment of conscription during World War One, reminding us of those who rejected military service and became conscientious objectors. Secondly, June 2016 is the bicentenary of the establishment of the (London) Peace Society. Alongside the formation of the New York Peace Society, its appearance is commonly seen as the beginning of the modern peace movement. Thirdly, 2016 is the start of a year of activities that commemorate the 50^th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s visit to Newcastle, where he accepted an honorary doctorate in November 1967. His impromptu address, which fused together the issues of poverty, war and racism, has inspired research at the city’s two universities and informs the work of the Martin Luther King PeaceCommittee which seeks to honour King’s legacy by ‘building cultures of peace’. 

In addition to around 25 academic papers, the conference will feature keynote lectures by Martin Ceadel, David Cortright, Kate Hudson and Thomas F. Jackson. Kate Hudson’s talk is a free public lecture. It is preceded by Peace Fair at which local initiatives on peace and conflict will present their work.

The conference is jointly organised and hosted by academics from Newcastle University (Nick Megoran, Ben Houston) and members of the 'Histories of Activism' research group at Northumbria University (Jon Coburn, Daniel Laqua, Sarah Hellawell). 

Registration both for the conference itself and for the free public lecture and peace fair has now closed. If you would like to get in touch with the organisers, feel free to email twocenturiesofpeacemaking@gmail.com.

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME

Tuesday, 7 June

09:30 – 10:00     Registration and coffee

10:00 – 11:15      Plenary I: Martin Ceadel (University of Oxford) – 'The Peace Society in retrospect'

11:15 – 11:45      Refreshments

11:45 – 13:15      Panel sessions A

a cENTURY OF Transnational peace aCTIVISM, 1825 TO 1925

• Michael Clinton (Gwynedd Mercy University) – Making friends of peace: exchanges between British and French peace advocates during the nineteenth century
• Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University) – The transnational trajectories of Leopold Katscher
• Sarah Hellawell (Northumbria University) – WILPF and transnational campaigning in the 1920s and 1930s

RETHINKING KING

• Simon Hall (Leeds University) – 1956: the year that made Martin Luther King, Jr. 
• Peter Ling (Nottingham University) – King’s performance of Gandhian nonviolence
• Jake Hodder (Nottingham University) – American pacifists and the political construction of Kingiji

13:15 – 14:30      Lunch

14:30 – 16:30      Panel sessions B

THE PEACE SOCIETY

• Ben Houston, Nick Megoran and Matthew Scott (Newcastle University) – The Newcastle Upon-Tyne Auxiliary Peace Society, c. 1817–1850 
• David Saunders (Newcastle University) – Peace In North-East England, 1816–1914 
• Keith Edghill (UCL) – Early nineteenth-century Christian pacifists and the Concept of defensive war 
• Richard Allen (University of South Wales) – ‘The disgrace of a Christian society’ (William Wilberforce): The Herald Of Peace and its reports on duelling in the 1820s

 NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE STUDY OF NONVIOLENCE 

• Sherrill W. Hayes (Kennesaw State University) – 'Peacejacking' and social policy: a case study of Martin Luther King and the Fair Housing Act of 1968
• Maia Hallward (Kennesaw State University) – Exploring the tensions and contradictions of nonviolence: the case of academic boycott
• Andreas Hackl (Edinburgh University) – Civility and resistance: debating the case of Palestinians in Tel Aviv
• Roberto Baldoli (Exeter University) – Reconsidering nonviolence: a revolutionary ideology for freedom and plurality

17:15 – 18:30    Peace fair with stalls by 14 groups and initiatives as well as refreshments, snacks and music

18:30 – 20:00    Plenary II / public lecture: Kate Hudson (CND) – 'Peace activism in twentieth-century Britain'

Wednesday, 8 June

09:00 – 09:30    Registration and coffee

09:30 – 10:45    Plenary III: Thomas F. Jackson (University of North Carolina) – 'Chicago to Newcastle: jangling disords of Martin Luther King's nonviolent strategy in November 1967'

10:45 – 11:15    Refreshments

11:15 – 12:45    Panel sessions C

Peace Activism AND THE GREAT WAR

• Sabine Grimshaw (Leeds University) – Writing about peace: self-representations of peace activists during the First World War
• Matt Perry (Newcastle University) – The Black Sea Mutinies: war, peace and revolution in mutineer subjectivity
• André Keil (Durham University) – Civil liberties and human rights activism during the Great War: the Bund Neues Vaterland and the Union of Democratic Control

CRITIQUING EMPIRE AND IMPERIALISM

• Christian Hogsbjerg (UCL) – 'Peace and empire are irreconcilable': C.L.R. James, Pan-Africanism and peacemaking in the Age of Extremes
• Ellen Crabtree (Newcastle University) – Books for Vietnam: French academic activism during the Vietnam War
• Discussant: Joe Street (Northumbria University)

12:45 – 13:45      Lunch

13:45 – 15:15      Panel sessions D

WOMEN AND INTERNATIONALISM

• Laurie Cohen (Universität Innsbruck) and Helen Kay (independent researcher) –  Connected enemies: German and British peace women communications during World War One
• Ingrid Sharp (Leeds University) – An unbroken family? Restoring the international community of women after World War I
• Laura Beers (Birmingham University) – Liberal and socialist collaboration in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

THINKING ABOUT PEACE AND WAR SINCE 1945

• Jon Coburn (Northumbria University) – And the beat goes on: past, present and future in a peace activist’s memoirs
• Christoph Laucht (Swansea University) – Hiroshima, Nagasaki and transnational medical activism against nuclear weapons in Britain, West Germany and the United States during the 1980s
• Tom Bishop (Nottingham University) – Salesmen, fallout shelters and consumer protest during the Nuclear Age

15:15 – 16:30      Plenary IV: David Cortright (University of Notre Dame) – 'Peace: the past, present and future of an idea and a movement'

Seminar Paper on the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

On Wednesday 14 October, Sarah Hellawell - a PhD student and member of the Histories of Activism group - will give a paper as part of the History Seminar Series at Northumbria University.  The event will take place at 4:30 pm in room 121 of the Lipman Building (building no. 15 on the campus map). Here are some further details regarding the subject of her talk:

'Peace is not a mere denial of war': 

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

In April 1915 over 1200 women gathered at The Hague in the Netherlands to discuss the issues of war and peace. This women's peace congress ultimately led to the formation of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which still exists today. The paper will demonstrate how WILPF used the rhetoric of motherhood to demand a place for women in the sphere of international politics, linking its feminist and pacifist aims. In other words, for these internationally-minded women, peace meant much more than the absence of war. This paper will highlight some of the organisation's campaigns for peace, internationalism and women's rights during the 1920s and 1930s, with a particular focus on the British section, known as the Women's International League (WIL). 

Call for Papers: 'Two Centuries of Peacemaking' Conference

On 7-8 June 2016, Newcastle University and Northumbria University are jointly hosting the conference 'Two Centuries of Peacemaking'.

2016 is an anniversary year that serves as a useful marker for academics and activists to contemplate where we stand in our understanding of peace and how to achieve it. June 2016 is the bicentenary of the establishment of the (London) Peace Society. Alongside the formation of the New York Peace Society, its appearance is widely seen as representing the beginning of the modern peace movement. Similarly it marks the start of a year of events to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the visit of Martin Luther King Jr to Newcastle in 1967 to accept an honorary doctorate. His impromptu address, which fused together the issues of poverty, war and racism, inspired the research expertise in the city’s two universities, and national work of the Martin Luther King Peace Committee to honour King’s legacy by ‘building cultures of peace’.

The conference will mark these anniversaries by asking big questions about the direction and vitality of the peace movement over 200 years, and the place of King’s philosophy of nonviolence within it. It will be a forum for scholars and activists to critically reflect on our activities and explore how to build future synergies. Between the bicentenary of the Peace Society, the centenary of Britain's enactment of conscription during World War One, and the run-up to the 50^th anniversary of MLK’s visit, there is ample opportunity to reflect on this history and stage a robust discussion on radical shifts in the peace movement a hundred years ago, including issues such as conscientious objection and the increased importance of feminist/women’s activist roles, the geographical and historical coordinates and influence of the civil rights movement, King’s distinctive nonviolence in global peace movements,  and more.

Four keynote speakers have confirmed their participation in the event:

• Martin Ceadel (Oxford)
• David Cortright (Notre Dame)
• Kate Hudson (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament)
• Thomas F. Jackson (North Carolina)

We now invite proposals for papers that may deal with the following (or related) theme: 

• the Peace Society in retrospect
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s concepts and practices of nonviolence – local settings and global networks
• locating the U.S. civil rights movement in historical and global peace and/or other activist movements
• exploring the relationship between violence, nonviolence and armed self-defence: from Gandhi and King to ‘colour revolutions’ and the ‘Arab Spring’ 
• histories of peace movements
• resisting war through conscientious objection, mutinies, desertions and ‘live and let live systems’
• women’s activism and feminist pacifism 
• transnational peace activism
• theology and religion in peace and nonviolence 
• peace ideas, analysis and practice 
• local histories of peace activism and war opposition (in Tyneside and elsewhere).

Please submit abstracts of 200 words plus biographical line to twocenturiesofpeacemaking@gmail.com  by 11 December 2015.  We welcome submissions of proposals for complete paper sessions.  Please provide panel title and name of convenor, as well as abstracts and biographical lines for each panel member.

One plenary session will be a roundtable for peace activists, educators and scholars to discuss the state of the peace movement 200 years on and the role of academics and activists within it.

A limited number of travel bursaries are available for postgraduate students and peace activists/educators. If you would like to request one, please indicate this to the organisers.

The event is organised by historians from Newcastle University and Northumbria University (Histories of Activism Research Group) and by the Northumbria and NewcastleUniversities Martin Luther King Peace Committee.