Call for Papers | New GEOP Conference (November 23–25, 2026)

13 05 2026

Call for Papers | New GEOP Conference (November 23–25, 2026)

“The War That Never Ended: Jewish Experiences of World War I in Central and Eastern Europe”

World War I is often remembered as a four-year conflict ending in 1918. Yet in Central and Eastern Europe, the war unfolded as a prolonged period of violence, displacement, and instability that blurred the boundaries between wartime and postwar. For Jewish communities across the region, the Great War was not a discrete episode but an extended experience whose social, economic, and political consequences stretched far into the interwar years.

This upcoming GEOP conference adopts the concept of “the war that never ended” to rethink World War I as an ongoing process that profoundly reshaped Jewish life. Military occupation, mass displacement, economic collapse, and pogroms transformed everyday existence. Jewish soldiers fought on opposing sides; traditional livelihoods disappeared amid inflation and hunger; and new welfare needs emerged as widows, agunot, and orphans relied increasingly on communal and charitable support. Although contemporaries recognized the Great War as a formative rupture—as reflected in YIVO autobiographies and later Izkor books—its impact has long been overshadowed by the Holocaust. Recent scholarship is now reopening this crucial chapter of Jewish history.

The conference seeks to bring together scholars from diverse fields and at all career stages (from advanced PhD students onward) to explore Jewish experiences of World War I in Central and Eastern Europe. We especially welcome work that bridges social, economic, gendered, local, and cultural perspectives, as well as studies examining the war’s longer-term consequences in the interwar period. Topics may range from displacement, violence, and daily life under wartime conditions to memory, literature, visual culture, and state–Jewish relations.

Meals and accommodation will be provided; limited travel support is available, with priority given to early-career and independent researchers.

Submit your paper proposal via POLIN’s website by June 22, 2026.