THE CONFERENCE
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The past several decades have seen an explosion of scholarly interest in the subject of war and gender.  At the same time, the study of collective or cultural memory, especially in connection with armed conflict, has become a veritable cottage industry. This conference seeks to bring these two areas of intensive study into dialogue with each other, exploring the complex ways in which gender shapes war memory and war memory shapes gender.  Comprised of a select number of presentations (so that all participants will be able to hear every paper), together with a keynote address by Professor Jennifer Haytock (SUNY-Brockport) and a panel discussion featuring women military veterans, the conference will address multiple conflicts and nationalities from the perspectives of multiple disciplines.

Hosted by the Center for the Study of War and Memory and the Gender Studies Program at the University of South Alabama, “War, Memory, and Gender” will be held in the HISTORY MUSEUM OF MOBILE, a beautiful structure located in the heart of the city’s scenic and historic downtown. A restaurant in the downtown area will host our Thursday-night reception for conference registrants, and THE HAMPTON INN (DOWNTOWN HISTORIC DISTRICT) is offering a block of rooms at a reduced rate.  Local attractions include Alabama Gulf-Coast beaches, the U.S.S. ALABAMA MEMORIAL PARK on Mobile Bay, the AFRICAN-AMERICAN HERITAGE TRAIL, the BELLINGRATH GARDENS AND HOME, the BLAKELEY CIVIL WAR BATTLEFIELD, the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta, and the charming nearby towns of Daphne and Fairhope.

THE ORGANIZERS
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Steven Trout is Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English at the University of South Alabama, where he also directs the Center for the Study of War and Memory.  His books include Memorial Fictions:  Willa Cather and the First World War (University of Nebraska Press, 2002), On the Battlefield of Memory:  The First World War and American Remembrance, 1919-1941 (University of Alabama Press, 2010), and The First World War in American Fiction:  An Anthology of Short Stories (forthcoming from Kent State University Press and co-edited by Scott D. Emmert). 

Martha Jane Brazy is Associate Professor of History and Coordinator of Graduate Studies at the University of South Alabama where she also serves as Director of Gender Studies. Her research focuses on U.S. social history with an emphasis on the South, African-American history, slavery, and multicultural women's history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the author of An American Planter: Stephen Duncan of Antebellum Natchez and New York (Louisiana State University Press, 2006) and her current research explores the life of the late African-American poet, social critic, and activist, June Jordan. 


THE KEYNOTE SPEAKER
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Jennifer Haytock is Professor and Chair in the English Department at the College at Brockport, SUNY, where she teaches twentieth-century American literature. Her monographs include At Home, At War: Domesticity and World War I in American Literature (2003), Edith Wharton and the Conversations of Literary Modernism (2008), and The Middle Class in the Great Depression: Popular Women’s Novels of the 1930s (2013). She has also published essays on Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, and Willa Cather, among others, and is beginning a project on literature of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In spring 2014, she is teaching a course titled “Soldiers, Identity, and Trauma” that focuses on literature of recent American wars and trauma studies.