Call for Papers
Beyond the Battlefield: The Labor of Military Service in Latin America and the Caribbean
Duke University, April 1-2, 2011
Scholars are increasingly examining military service as an important interaction between the state and its residents that critically shapes understandings of the nation, belonging, honor, race, ethnicity, and masculinity. While fruitful work is being done in these areas, the actual labor performed by soldiers, especially off of the battlefield, has yet to be substantively explored. Although militaries frequently harness the discourse of defending the nation in order to compel service, soldiers' labor often differs quite sharply from the martial tasks of protecting borders and fighting wars. In order to develop new approaches to the historical study of military work cultures, this conference will investigate the laboring experiences of soldiers and sailors in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our aim is to foster an interdisciplinary conversation with scholars who study labor and the military, and to shed light on the complex relationship between martial and non-martial forms of labor from the colonial period to the present.
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Please visit http://clacs.aas.duke.edu/program/conferences/2011LALHC.php
for full conference goals, scope, and rationale.
Please send paper abstract and CV or biographical paragraph to Liz Shesko ([mailto]ems19@duke.edu[/mailto]) and Reena Goldthree ([mailto]rg3@duke.edu[/mailto]) by September 30, 2010. The conference is open to graduate students, faculty members, and independent scholars from all disciplines, and we welcome proposals for projects that are ongoing, exploratory, and not yet fully formed. All accepted papers will be pre-circulated to foster in-depth and rigorous discussion. A limited number of conference travel fellowships will be available for conference participants without institutional support.