Colby College
Office of Alumni Relations
4310 Mayflower Hill
Waterville, ME 04901-8843
P: 207-859-4310
F: 207-859-4316
alumni@colby.edu
 

2007: In the Shadow of the Great War

July 22-25, 2007
 
WWI soldierThe Great War brought carnage and loss such as the world had never seen. Millions of lives were lost, nations were dispirited and virtually destroyed, and many were horrified to see what devastation humanity was capable of visiting upon itself. Those who survived the war took part in, and were witness to, cultural transformations of the era that came to define the “Modern” in art, music, literature, philosophy, global politics, economic policies, technological development, and the organization of public life.

Alumni College 2007 will examine multiple aspects of World War I, both as a geopolitical conflict and as a historical juncture that coincided with what came to define the culture of the twentieth century. Among the topics of faculty lectures: European concerns during and after World War I, including the rise of fascism and Bolshevism and consequences for the "victors" in Europe; the post-war formation of nation states in the Middle East and the roots of current conflicts in that region; the consequences of diseases such as malaria and influenza during the war years and the impulse toward global public health; technological developments and their role in the war era; musical production and performance of the era; the American women’s suffrage movement and the war’s impact on its eventual success in 1920; and Modernism in American literature. Poignantly, this war did not end all war, nor did it make the world safe for democracy. It did, however, leave its indelible mark on peoples, nations, and practices, and Alumni College 2007 will examine the long shadow it cast across the twentieth century.
 
Faculty Lectures

 Making Sense of Loss: Recasting Europe After the Great War
The Great War cost Europe millions of lives and astronomical sums of money. Despite the huge sacrifices, however, it left behind an unsettled situation full of grief, anger, and confusion. Which lessons did state leaders and military planners learn from the war? How could a continent disillusioned about war trigger a second world war a generation after the first? Was the explosion of creativity in the arts an aftershock of the war? This session will address the rise of fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany, the frustrations of being a victor in Britain and France, and the Bolshevist revolution in Russia as elements of the greater post-war context.
Raffael Scheck, professor of history and chair of the Department of History

Formation of the Modern Middle East
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, as a result of its involvement in WWI in alliance with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empires, had profound ramifications for state formation and nation building in the Middle East. Almost all of the state boundaries in the Middle East were drawn by the British and French in their capacity as victors, with their interests and goals at the forefront. This session will examine the impact of those goals on the long-term development of these newly formed states by focusing on the development of the state of Iraq and its attempt to form a nation from the wreckage of WWI.
John Turner, assistant professor of history

Mosquitoes, Quinine, and Malaria: The Impulse Toward Global Public Health
At the beginning of the twentieth century, malaria was the world’s largest public health problem. Mosquitoes carried the parasites, and quinine could cure. During the Great War, epidemic malaria struck violently, and in the inter-war years malaria infections soared. The League of Nations assessed the global dimensions of the disease. What could and should be done? Should mosquitoes be controlled or should the sick be treated? This session explores the historical background of the contemporary challenges of malaria treatment and control.
James Webb, professor of history

The Technological Landscape “Over There”
World War I was fought in the trenches and supported by mass-produced industrial weapons of position, notably machine guns and long-range artillery. Newer weapons, emphasizing mobility and breakthroughs such as aviation, tanks, and poison gas changed the face of battle, while the medical profession struggled valiantly with the massive number of casualties.  In the end, as the public reassessed its former enthusiasm for technology, governments renewed their commitments to the technology of warfare.
James Fleming, professor of science, technology and society

WWI: The Musical
The explosion of popular styles of music within the United States, Argentina, and Brazil after WWI transported, influenced, and actually changed European musical ideals in both popular and classical venues. This session will cover the influence of the musics of the Americas before and after WWI, from classical American composer Victor Herbert, composing popular music in a style reminiscent of the European opera composer, to the advent and propagation of tango, maxixe, ragtime, stomps, cake dance, blues, dixieland, and more.
Eric Thomas, director of band activities

Reaching the Finish Line: World War I and the Suffrage Amendment
Some historians argue that quiet organizing, campaigning, agitating, demonstrating, rock throwing, and hunger striking on behalf of women's suffrage had less impact on Woodrow Wilson, the American Congress, and American men than did the determination of proponents simply to keep the idea of women voting alive until the notion became commonplace. Others credit the impact of radical activism on the part of the suffragists in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Still others insist that the key to American women being granted suffrage at the federal level in 1920 lay in their eager and dedicated participation on the home front and the battle front in World War I. We will discuss all these theories and see which one we find most persuasive.
Elizabeth Leonard, John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Professor of History

Finding What Will Suffice: American Writers and the Shadow of the Great War
Glancing back to the period after the conclusion of WWI, which some Americans call “the Negro Renaissance,” or “the Harlem Renaissance,” Langston Hughes asked, “What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?” Hughes, like other black and white poets, including Wallace Stevens—who proposed confidently, “the poem of the mind in the act of finding what will suffice”—interpreted the period between the two world wars in terms of progress and actualization in all spheres, especially de jure racial equality and universal political enfranchisement. This “dream” comported well with Stevens’s insistence on the role of art and the artist in both constructing and performing on the brave new world’s stage. Doing so would determine, inexorably, the defining moral imperatives for the twentieth century. This session will explore the formidable role American poets and poetry played, in Stevens’s phrase, “finding what will suffice” to both illuminate and emerge from the shadows of the Great War with a vision fit for the future. In varying degrees of close reading, the session will consider poems by Hughes, Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson and very short fiction excerpts from F. Scott Fitzgerald and Richard Wright.
Cedric Bryant, Lee Family Professor of English