University of Leeds Public Lecture: Feeling Violence: Emotional Suffering and Gender in Austria's First World War

This public lecture is presented by Dr Louise Earnshaw as part of the International Society for First World War Studies’ Dennis Showalter Memorial Lecture series. It explores how violence was experienced across Austria-Hungary during the First World War, asking where violence took place and how ordinary people understood it in the context of collapsing boundaries between battlefront and home front.

The lecture draws on diaries, memoirs and autobiographical writing to examine fear, shame and resentment through the lenses of gender and the history of emotions. It looks at how life-writing can help recover experiences that are otherwise difficult to trace, and how cultural frameworks shaped what could be expressed as violence and what remained unspoken.

The event is suitable for anyone with an interest in First World War history, gender history and the history of emotions.