The Inaugural Dennis Showalter Memorial Lecture for an Emerging Scholar
Please note: this lecture is now taking place on Thursday 3rd March 2022.
About the Lecture
Beginning in 2021, the honour to
deliver this lecture will be awarded annually to an outstanding emerging
scholar in First World War Studies, selected by the Awards Committee of
the International Society for First World War Studies. Dennis
Showalter was Professor of History at Colorado College, the author or editor of
16 books and numerous articles, and a former president of the Society for
Military History. He believed in rescuing stray cats, the New York Yankees
baseball team, and the responsibility of senior scholars to mentor and
encourage the next generation. Dennis was also a much loved and valued
member of the International Society for First World War Studies, who are
delighted to be able to honour his memory through an event which speaks so
strongly to the values of collegiality and support for the next generation of
First World War scholars.
The inaugural speaker will be Dr
Samraghni Bonnerjee (Research Fellow in the Department of Humanities at
Northumbria University). Dr Bonnerjee will speak on the subject of ‘Fungible
Bodies’: While Indian soldiers were allowed to fight in the First World War,
the colonial state produced copious paperwork, laying out the legislations that
controlled and contained their movements, and regulated the dissemination of
medical treatment in case of injury or sickness. Drawing on a range of
theoretical and methodological frameworks, this lecture will close-read some of
these policies to demonstrate how the necropolitical colonial state made the
bodies of soldiers of colour available for injury, and formulated legislation
that gave the coloniser the right to kill or maim, disseminate or refuse care.
Ultimately, it will argue for a rereading of colonial policy as colonial
knowledge formation, particularly in the context of the imperial First World
War: the stratification of soldier-patients of colour as dispensable bodies
excluded from access to adequate care resonates across the context of global
warfare in 20th and 21st centuries.
About the Speaker
View Dr Samraghni Bonnerjee's profile here.
Funded by the International Society for First World War Studies
To register for this free lecture, please fill in the form below.
