Call for abstracts for chapters in an edited collection titled ‘Creative Methods in Military Studies’
Editor: Dr Alice Cree, Newcastle University
How do we do critical military studies? CMS has done much to explore the myriad sites, subjects and practices of military power, considering for example military memoirs (Woodward 2003; Woodward & Jenkings 2012, 2018), toys and video games (Martin & Steuter 2010; Woodyer 2012; Yarwood 2015), sport (Kelly 2012; Cree & Caddick 2019) and even food products (Tidy 2015). More recently, emerging work has begun to consider the creative and performing arts as lenses through which to explore militarised culture, including theatre (Purnell & Danilova 2018), dance (Åhäll 2018), and music (Cree 2019; Baker 2018). This work gives texture to our understandings of the embodied and affective circulations of militarised cultures and ideas; as Leavy (2015) argues, “performance serves as a method for exposing what is otherwise impossible to reveal” (p175).
But, what can the creative arts and creative practice more broadly help to reveal, that we might struggle to approach otherwise? And how might we engage this creativity in our own research methodologies and practice?
Following from the success of the ‘Creative Methods in Military Studies’ workshop held at Newcastle University in June 2019, this edited book hopes to showcase some of the fantastic creative work that is being done in this area, and highlight the value of being creative with our methodological approaches in CMS research. Each chapter should where possible focus on a particular creative project (for example using theatre, dance, music, poetry, fiction, or fine art), and in part explore i) what creative methods can offer our understanding of military power and militarized cultures, and ii) what some of the challenges of this kind of work might be.
We invite interested chapter contributors to submit an abstract of no more than 200 words to Dr Alice Cree (alice.cree@newcastle.ac.uk) by 5pm on Friday 28th February 2020.
To discuss an idea, or for any other queries, please contact Alice at the email address above.