The two world wars of the first half of the twentieth century, World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939 - 1945), wrought extraordinary levels of destruction. Much of the artistic production during the period reflected grim and complicated realities, while a number of works of art of the post-war period played a role in the memorialization of the wars or served as critical commentary on the wars’ historical legacies. We are calling for article proposals that explore how art expressed the collective experience and memory of these two monumentally important global conflagrations and of conflicts that occurred in the interwar years.
We seek articles that address the ways in which individuals, groups, and nations employed art to shape the collective memory and remembrance of these profoundly transformative conflicts. The articles can address all aspects of the visual arts in a variety of forms, including the applied arts and New Media. While the Eastern and Western fronts in Europe are expected to receive the most attention, both wars were truly global. Therefore, we welcome proposals that address any national context. In particular, we wish to explore the representation of these aspects of war: the experience of those who directly encountered battle; how imagery affected and connected those on "the home front"; how art formed evolving historical narratives of war; sites of memory and the memorialization of key people, events, and places.
To propose an article for this special issue of Arts, please send a CV, article title, and short abstract to the editor, Andrew M. Nedd, at email@example.com. Please note that there is a two-stage submission procedure. We first collect proposals by 15 June 2019. Before 1 August, we will invite selected abstracts to be submitted as full papers (max. 15,000 words) for peer review by 1 December 2019.
Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access journal published quarterly online by MDPI. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/arts