Organising committee: Laurent Dornel (UPPA-ITEM), Laurent Jalabert (UPPA-ITEM), Stéphane Le Bras (Univ.Blaise-Pascal Clermont-Ferrand-CHEC), Josette Pontet (Société des Sciences Lettres et Arts de Bayonne) and Jean-François Vergez (ONAC.64)

Time: 19-20 November 2015
Venue: Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, France
Deadline: 4 May 2015

With a few exceptions, relatively little attention has been paid in the (French) historiography to the question of the home front. Apart from a few seminal studies, this “other front” has to a large extent been neglected. For France, where most of the fighting on the Western front took place, the home front corresponded to the “interior zone”: a space outside the “armed forces zone” where there were no military operations against the enemy but which was however caught up in the logic of total war. The home front was therefore a vast space linked symbolically, politically, emotionally and economically to the territories where the fighting was taking place or which had been occupied by the enemy.

Thus, as a place to seek refuge or healing, mourn the dead or find new strength, the home front played an important role in the war, though in its own specific ways and at its own specific pace. In fact, while most historical study focuses on the wartime period and … read more and Source (Web)