[H-verkko] Helsinki, Masculinity, Class and War in the Life Stories of Scott Macfie (1868-1935) and Georg Hewins (1879-1977)

[agricola at utu.fi]

Agricolan tapahtumakalenteriin on lähetetty uusi ilmoitus:

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Masculinity, Class and War in the Life Stories of Scott Macfie
(1868-1935) and Georg Hewins (1879-1977)
Helsinki 10.11.2008 klo 12:15

SKS:n tutkijaseminaari 10.11. klo 12-14, SKS:n juhlasali (2. krs),
Hallituskatu 1, Helsinki

T. G. Ashplant (Liverpool John Moores University, England)
The Heroism of Everyday Life:
Masculinity, Class and War in the Life Stories of
Scott Macfie (1868-1935) and George Hewins (1879-1977)

Synopsis

This lecture will explore connections between the life stories of
Scott Macfie (1868-1935) and George Hewins (1879-1977).  They were
born at widely separated locations in the class structure of late
Victorian Britain.  Scott Macfie was the eldest son of a
distinguished Anglo-Scottish family; his grandfather was a member of
Parliament, while his father ran the Liverpool branch of the family
sugar-refining business.  Educated at the Universities of Cambridge,
Göttingen and Edinburgh, Macfie entered the family business in his
early twenties.  George Hewins was the illegitimate son of a
working-class woman in a Midlands town; brought up by his great-aunt,
he left school at the age of eleven and worked for the next
twenty-five years as a general labourer.

Both men joined the Volunteers (voluntary, part-time soldiers) around
1900.  Both enlisted in the British Army during the First World War:
Macfie voluntarily (he had left the Volunteers in 1907, and was
over-age for military service in 1914), Hewins under compulsion
(although now a father of eight, he had signed an agreement to serve
if required and was duly called up).  Each served courageously on the
Western Front: Macfie invalided home for a year 'emaciated' through
his hard work, Hewins severely wounded during the Battleof the
Somme.

Focussing especially on questions of class, masculinity, sexuality,
and identity, this paper will examine the complex underpinnings of
their apparently straightforward 'heroism': the motivations and
circumstances which led each man into wartime service.  It will
delineate a 'heroism of everyday life', carried over into war
service, in contrast to more conventional notions of heroism centred
round martial courage and performance.


Timothy Ashplant is Professor of Social and Cultural History at
Liverpool John Moores University, England.  His current research
interests include: working-class autobiography and life-writings, and
their relationships to political identities and autobiographical
theory; the historical construction of masculinity, and its
relationship to class and political identities; and historiographical
theory, including its relationship with psychoanalytic theory.  He is
the author of Fractured Loyalties: Masculinity, Class and Politics in
Britain, 1900-30 (London: RiversOram, 2007); and co-editor of
Explorations in Cultural History (with G. Smyth; London: Pluto,
2001), and The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration (with G.
Dawson & M. Roper; London: Routledge, 2000).

http:///www.finlit.fi/tutkimus/index.htm

Ilmoituksen lähetti:
 Ilona Pikkanen <ilona.pikkanen at finlit.fi> 
21.10.2008 10:26

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http://agricola.utu.fi/nyt/tapahtuu/