CfP: Special issue entitled “Taming War and Postwar Violence”

Call for Papers for a Special Issue Entitled “Taming War and Postwar Violence”

Guest Editor: Ota Konrád

Violence and the experiences of violence associated with war are among the central concerns of modern social science and historical research. Since the First World War—with its new forms of mass industrialized violence and the blurring of the boundaries between front lines and home fronts—and the emergence of modern societies marked by conscription and the militarization of everyday life, war-related violence has become a shared experience for a broad spectrum of social groups, and not merely professional soldiers. It has decisively shaped individual lives, social structures, and the collective memories of war in postwar societies, with long-term consequences that have essentially shaped the political development and political culture of those societies.

As numerous studies demonstrate, widespread violence in wartime cannot be regarded as merely an aberration or excess. Instead, it has often been an integral part of military tactics, a tool for enforcing political objectives, and a kind of behavior that is acceptable to—or at least tolerated by—political and military elites, as well as large segments of the civilian population. Violence is internalized and normalized by otherwise “ordinary” men and soldiers. Scholarship on sexual violence as a weapon of war, on genocides occurring in wartime contexts, on occupation regimes, on the treatment of prisoners of war, on the specific dynamics of radicalization of the perpetrators of war crimes, and on postwar conflicts that often surpass the brutality of the preceding war illustrates how embedded indiscriminate violence has become in modern warfare.

At the same time, the qualitative and quantitative transformations of wartime violence have been accompanied by attempts to control and regulate the violence of war, or even eliminate it altogether, which have met with varying degrees of success. These efforts range from distinguishing “legitimate” forms of wartime violence from war crimes, through the establishment of legal norms to govern the treatment of prisoners of war and the conduct of occupying powers, to broader international initiatives aimed at delegitimizing war as a means of state interaction entirely. Regulation of wartime violence also encompasses strategies adopted by groups and individuals confronted with violence at the regional or local level, whether motivated by ethical principles or by pragmatic considerations. Equally important are strategies for coping with the consequences of violence that address or ignore the traces it leaves in bodies, minds, and communities. The way societies and individuals process violent experiences inevitably shapes collective and individual memories.

Against this backdrop, this special issue invites contributions that engage with taming violence and violent experiences associated with war and armed conflicts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in North America, Europe, and post-Soviet Eurasia. We welcome submissions from a wide range of disciplines, including contemporary history, political science, anthropology, memory studies, genocide studies, international law, and international relations.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Occupation regimes and strategies for regulating and taming violence in occupied territories.
• Managing postwar conflicts, insurgencies, and paramilitary violence.
• Escalation or regulation of colonial violence.
• Coping with the legacy of wartime violence and genocide in postwar societies.
• Remembrance of war and violence.
• Bodily and psychological traces of wartime violence and the challenges of wartime and postwar health care.
• Dealing with and treating sexual and gender-based violence.
• Legal and normative frameworks regulating violence in war.
• Ethical considerations concerning violence in wartime.
• National ideologies and violence.
• New methodological approaches to the study of war-related violence.

Articles must be written in English and ideally should be 6,000 to 9,000 words long (excluding footnotes and abstract). Submissions should be sent to the editorial team at stuter@fsv.cuni.cz or uploaded via the Studia Territorialia journal management system. Authors should consult the journal’s submission guidelines for further instructions and guidance on style. All contributions are subject to double-blind peer review.

Deadline for submission of abstracts (no more than 300 words): January 31, 2026.
Notification of status by: February 15, 2026.
Deadline for submission of articles: April 30, 2026.

Acta Universitatis Carolinae – Studia Territorialia is a leading Czech peer-reviewed academic journal focusing on area studies. It covers the history and the social, political, and economic affairs of the nations of North America, Europe, and post-Soviet Eurasia in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The journal is published by the Institute of International Studies of Charles University, Prague. It is indexed in the SCOPUS, ERIH PLUS, EBSCO, DOAJ, and CEEOL databases, among others.

For further information, please feel free to contact the editors at stuter@fsv.cuni.cz.