The War H-Lab explores the ways in which major human sciences—psychology, psychoanalysis, cybernetics, anthropology, etc.—were crucially transformed by the shifting conceptions and practices of warfare between 1910-1955. It will focus on WWI, interwar France, Germany and Britain, WWII, anti-colonial revolutions taking place during this period, and the beginning of the Cold War. The lab will engage recent historiographical and methodological innovations (the advent of a new international history, indigenous studies and Native American history, intellectual, legal and economic history), and disciplines that have been largely absent from historiographical or social-science-oriented approaches to war—including literature and aesthetics—and their attention to representation, memory, and trauma.
By re-framing the overall picture around a war/knowledge axis, the lab will ask: How did major human sciences transform as a result of their entanglement with concepts of war and conflict between 1910 and 1955? And: In what ways might attempts at a new periodization and a more comprehensive understanding of conceptions of war and its role in social and political transformation open up a new field of inquiry?
In addition to exploring historically how war has been coupled with knowledge, the War H-Lab will take a rapid-response approach to current events, offering intellectual engagements far broader in scope than would be possible for any one individual to provide.
Lab Team
Madison Bastress, PhD candidate, History
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Professor, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
Elizabeth Ellis, Assistant Professor, History
Stefanos Geroulanos, Professor, History
Alys George, Assistant Professor, German
Lauren Kirk, PhD candidate, Institute of French Studies / History
Jonas Knatz, PhD candidate, History
Jeanne Etelain, PhD candidate, French
Alexander Langstaff, PhD candidate, History
Emily Stewart Long, Adjunct Instructor, History
Matyas Mervey, PhD candidate, History
Anne Schult, PhD candidate, History
Jennifer Trowbridge, PhD candidate, Anthropology