Causes and Consequences
Photo from the collection of James Gordon Steese, class of 1902, in Archives & Special Collections.
Panel discussion on World War I kicks off 2014-15 Clarke Forum series
“ ‘The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand caused the First World War.’ This is what many people have been taught,” says Kamaal Haque, assistant professor of German. “The reality, of course, is more complicated.”
On Monday, Sept. 8, at 7 p.m. in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter (ATS) auditorium, Haque will join several of his colleagues at Dickinson and the U.S. Army War College to explore that more complicated reality. Monday’s event, World War I: The Causes, is the first of a two-part panel discussion sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, and it kicks off the forum’s 2014-15 series of lectures and events.
Monday’s panelists include Haque and War College faculty members Craig Nation and Michael Neiberg. The panelists will discuss how the actions of Germany made the war inevitable, the inability of the European antiwar movement to act effectively against the onset of war and reactions to the war by Europeans outside the halls of power.
On Tuesday, Sept. 9, also at 7 p.m. and in ATS, the conversation will continue with World War I: The Consequences. From the defeat of the Ottoman Empire to U.S. race relations and an early understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder, many of those consequences continue to reverberate today.
Professor of English Wendy Moffat, biographer and social historian of the American and European modern era, has been conducting research on Thomas W. Salmon, a military psychiatrist and a pioneer in mental-health research during World War I.
“He anticipates the social costs of the war on American society,” Moffat says, noting that Salmon thought “war neurosis” was, as he called it, “a perfectly legitimate way to respond to the terrible trauma of that kind of combat, which no American had ever seen.”
Joining Moffat on Tuesday’s panel are David Commins, professor of history; Dominique Laurent, associate professor of French; Crystal Moten, assistant professor of history; and U.S. Army War College faculty member Doug Mastriano.
Learn more
- Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
- “The Physicality of History”
- Hear Wendy Moffat discuss Thomas W. Salmon on Smart Talk
- Latest News
Published September 4, 2014