PHILADELPHIA, PA – Chestnut Hill College will open its doors for the “The Legacy of World War I: An Interdisciplinary Conference,” organized to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of World War I while highlighting the significant changes still felt from its aftermath to this day. The conference will run Friday and Saturday, November 14 and 15, at the Commonwealth Chateau, on the College’s SugarLoaf Hill campus.

Keynote speakers include Jay M. Winter, Ph.D., the Charles J. Still professor of history at Yale University, and Laura Lee Downs, Ph.D., chair in gender history in the department of history and civilization at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. In addition to the keynote speakers, more than 60 scholars are scheduled to present scholarly papers on the topic of World War I as well.

“Most of the conflicts in the world today such as Ukraine, Israel, Syria, and China can be traced back to the 1914-1918 war. The shape of today’s world was set in 1914-1918, in ways even more visible after the end of the Cold War,” said Dr. Winter.

Dr. Winter says a new generation of historians have brought forth what he calls a new transnational approach to the history of World War I, which emphasizes the global features of the first war between industrialized nations whose imperial holdings span five continents.

“Ten million men were killed and 25 million were wounded in four years. Here was a war which eroded and then erased the distinction between military and civilian targets, leading to atrocities, war crimes and the first genocide of the twentieth century in Ottoman, Turkey. No one can make sense of our violent times without returning to the primal catastrophe of the twentieth century, the First World War,” said Dr. Winter.

Dr. Winter said people who attend lectures like this can gain a sense of war as a Pandora’s Box that once opened, no one can control its destructive forces.

“Sometimes war is necessary, such as against Hitler in 1939, but it never follows the path that the people who launch it hope it will follow,” said Dr. Winter.

Dr. Winter, a specialist on World War I and its impact on the 20th century, authored or co-authored a dozen books on the various subjects and co-produced, co-wrote and was chief historian for the PBS series “The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century,” which won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award and a Producers Guild of American Award for best television documentary in 1997.

Dr. Laura Lee Downs has previously taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Columbia University, and held invited professorships at Northwestern University, Yale University, New York University and the University of California at Irvine. Downs has researched and contributed to several publications regarding gender in historical contexts and her current research explores the shifting relationships between the social and the political in twentieth-century Europe.

Dr. Downs has received numerous fellowships which include the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the J. William Fulbright Fellowship for Research in France, the American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship, and the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities.

This two-day conference is open to the public and the fee is $125. For more information, a complete list of speakers, and to register, visit or contact William Walker, Ph.D., at

 

About Chestnut Hill College

 

          Celebrating 90 years of tradition, Chestnut Hill College is a four-year, co-ed Catholic college in the Ignatian tradition that offers a traditional liberal arts undergraduate program as well as accelerated undergraduate degrees, master’s and doctoral programs. The College has been rated by US News & World Report as among the best master’s universities in the North, as among the best Northeastern colleges by The Princeton Review, and has been classified as selective by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Since 1924, the College has offered a rigorous curriculum that provides students with a broad background in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. The goal of Chestnut Hill College has been to prepare students for life’s challenges by helping them to grow intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and socially.