International seminar tackles the construction of gender sexuality and warfare in history art and literature

Do questions of gender and sexuality play a significant part in the way wars are waged, mediated and understood?

This month, academics from across the world will visit Leicester to explore this question.

'Passions of War', held on February 19 and 20, aims to encourage cross-disciplinary debate about the relations between gender, sexuality and conflict between 1500 and 1945.

Organised by Leicester's School of English and the Department of English Studies at Ghent University, the symposium will include speakers from Australia, Denmark, Italy and the US.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the result will be a series of essays and articles, which will be made available through a range of media, including blogs, podcasts and contributions to themed museum displays in London and Ghent.

Principal investigator for the AHRC Research Network Professor Philip Shaw said: “The workshops will provide an opportunity for scholars to explore the relations between gender, war and sexuality. A key aim of the workshops will be to foster dialogue between UK, European and International scholars working across the disciplines in the arts and humanities and the social sciences.

“Topics for discussion will include: domestic intimacy in wartime spaces; homoerotic desire on, and off, the battlefield; the experiences of trans* veterans; cultures of male care-giving and the construction of military masculinities.”