Reflections on the New Wave of Scholarship on the First World War

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Session Description

The years surrounding the centennial of the First World War witnessed an explosion of new scholarship on the causes, conduct, termination, and consequences of the war, beginning with Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers (2012) and continuing beyond the 2014 centennial. Ten years later, APSA 2024 marks a good opportunity to reflect on what we have learned from this new research – on the First World War itself, on how to study it, and on its implications for theories of international conflict. The scholars on this roundtable proposal include both historians and political scientists, each of whom has written extensively about the causes and other dimensions of the First World War. Collectively, they encompass varied theoretical orientations, levels of analysis, and methodological orientations. We are asking each roundtable participant to reflect upon the extent to which and ways in which their prior views on the First World War have changed in response to new scholarship on the war.

Sub Unit

• Division 19: International Security 

Cosponsor

• Division 43: International History and Politics

Chair

• Jack S. Levy Rutgers University

Presenters

• Marc Trachtenberg

• William Mulligan University College Dublin

• Dale Copeland University of Virginia

• Etel L. Solingen University of California Irvine

• Scott Wolford University of Texas

• John A. Vasquez University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Jack S. Levy Rutgers University