INTELLECTUAL
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Conference presentation and program

The Centenary of Intellectual Cooperation

On August 1, 1922, on the shores of Lake Geneva, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) met for the first time in what would later become the “Palais Wilson”. Although this was the first time that these twelve international personalities from the sciences and arts, including Henri Bergson, Kristine Bonnevie, Marie Curie-Sklodowska, Albert Einstein, Gilbert Murray, Jules Destrée and George E. Hale, came together, the idea of creating such a coordinating body for intellectual matters predates the founding of the League of Nations and has its origins in the internationalist movements of the late 19th century. What would later be considered by its actors as an attempt to build a “General Republic of Intelligence” or a “League of the Minds”, was just one element of the vast diplomatic and bureaucratic machine that was set up at the end of the Great War to try to pacify Europe and create a new world order based on multilateral cooperation.

But the idea of intellectual cooperation nonetheless inspired the work of bodies and institutions that operated for nearly 20 years, trying to find their place and define their missions in a rapidly changing context. From a consultative committee, it quickly grew to become a real center of activity with the founding of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) in Paris in 1926 and other third-party structures like the International Educational Cinematographic Institute (Rome, 1928). Not without generating some tensions with the League of Nations at the turn of the 1930s, this institutionalization led to intellectual cooperation gradually becoming independent from the League’s Secretariat. Although the Second World War interrupted the transformation of the Committee and the Institute into a full-fledged international organisation, UNESCO would resume and expand the activity in this field at the end of the conflict.

The centenary of the creation of the ICIC is an opportunity for historians to step back and examine the achievements but also the limitations of this enterprise, its lack of diversity and cultural representativeness. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in this field of research (see bibliography), in parallel with a renewed interest in the League of Nations as a whole, in a context of doubts about the capacity of multilateral institutions. Without attempting to cover all the areas that remain to be studied in relation to intellectual cooperation and soft power diplomacy in the interwar period, such an event therefore seems to be a useful place of exchange at the crossroads between the archives, teaching and research communities. To do this, the scientific committee invites participants to reflect in particular on the renewal of our methods: whether it is about new approaches or the use of innovative digital tools, the aim of this conference is not only to look at the past but also to inspire future research.

Program

Thursday May 12 2022

     
09:00 WELCOME SESSION  
  Francesco Pisano and Blandine Blukacz-Louisfert Welcome
  Martin Grandjean Introduction to the conference
09:45 SESSION 1 Intellectual Cooperation in the Diplomatic Field (chair: Ludovic Tournès)
  Charlotte Faucher European cultural diplomacies and the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC)
  Marilena Papadaki N. Politis (1872-1942), a “governments’ intellectual’: the promotion of the idea of intellectual cooperation as a basis for world peace
  Pelle Van Dijk Mobilising international public opinion: Moral disarmament as the public diplomacy of the League of Nations
10:45 Coffee pause  
11:15 SESSION 2 Foundations of Intellectual Cooperation (chair: Daniel Laqua)
  Jonathan Voges In the engine room of intellectual cooperation. A prosographic approach to the civil servants of the Institut international de coopération intellectuelle in Paris
  Ilaria Scaglia A League of Minds with a Heart: Intellectual Cooperation and Emotions in the Interwar Period and Beyond
  Gabriel Galvez-Behar Intellectual Cooperation and the Institutionalization of Scientific Research
12:15 Lunch  
13:30 SESSION 3 Central and Eastern Europe, Fertile Ground for Intellectual Cooperation (chair: Sandrine Kott)
  Johannes Feichtinger Central Europe and The Making of Intellectual Cooperation
  Anastassiya Schacht Scholars amidst borders: Soviet representation to the League’s Committee on Intellectual Cooperation as an attempt of cross-ideological cooperation in the interwar Europe
  Monika Šipelytė Gabrielle Radziwill: the story of Eastern European princess at the service of Intellectual Cooperation
14:30 Coffee pause  
15:00 SESSION 4 Arts and Culture at the League of Nations (chair: Diana Roig Sanz)
  Camila Gatica Mizala ‘Le film, éducateur universel”. The reception of the International Educational Cinematographic Institute in Chile
  Annamaria Ducci The League of Nations and Cultural Heritage. For an intellectual history of a notion
  Christiane Sibille « Les relations internationales au point de vue musical » – Music and Intellectual Cooperation
16:00 Pause  
16:30 SESSION 5 Latin American intellectual cooperation (chair: Martin Grandjean)
  Leandro Lacquaniti The Argentine Commission for Intellectual Cooperation. The itinerary of a cultural diplomacy agency of the Argentine State (1936-1948)
  Nelva Mildred Hernandez Sosa and Alexandra Pita Gonzalez Mexico and the Permanent International Studies Conference. The Sense of the International, 1928-1939
17:10 End of the first day  


Friday May 13 2022

     
09:00 OPENING SESSION  
  Martin Grandjean Welcome
  Blandine Blukacz-Louisfert and Adama Pam The archives of intellectual cooperation
09:45 SESSION 6 Asia and Intellectual Cooperation: a Long-Distance Relationship (chair: Harumi Goto-Shibata)
  Arnab Dutta Towards the Invention of a Common Language of Science: The League of Nations’ Committee for Intellectual Cooperation and the Colonial Question in British India
  Takashi Saikawa Nationalism and Internationalism in Intellectual Co-operation: Aikitsu Tanakadate and the Romanization of Japanese Language
  Jennifer Chang Beyond Representation: The Bibliothèque Sino-Internationale and the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, 1933-1939
10:45 Coffee pause  
11:15 SESSION 7 The League of Nations and Educational Issues (chair: Corinne Pernet)
  Emeline Brylinski and Rita Hofstetter Education and childhood, a coveted field. The International Bureau of Education, an intergovernmental body seized in its relational network
  Kaiyi Li Teaching about the League of Nations: An attempt of cultivating international consensus during the interwar period
  Xavier Riondet How to guide and justify the work of the Intellectual Cooperation on textbooks? About the constitution and the action of the Committee of Experts de 1931
12:15 Lunch  
13:30 SESSION 8 Intellectual Cooperation Facing Political Challenges in Western Europe (chair: Sacha Zala)
  Tomás Irish ‘The League Committee of Intellectual Cooperation […] has never attracted much sympathy in Great Britain’: Britain and Intellectual Co-operation in the Interwar Period
  Benjamin Martin Fascist Cultural Internationalism? Intellectual Cooperation in Mussolini’s Italy, 1925-1937
  Jan Stöckmann Academic Refugees and Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations
14:30 Coffee pause  
15:00 SESSION 9 The Central Role of Women in Intellectual Cooperation (chair: Tomás Irish)
  Joyce Goodman Laura Dreyfus-Barney (1897-1974), the International Council of Women and International Intellectual Cooperation at Paris, Geneva, and Rome
  Diana Roig Sanz A Global and Gender Perspective to the Historiography of Intellectual Cooperation
  Itzel Toledo Garcia Women in International Cooperation during the Interwar Period: the case of Mexican Palma Guillén
16:00 Pause  
16:30 SESSION 10 Literary questions at the League of Nations (chair: Alexandra Pita Gonzalez)
  Elisabet Carbo-Catalan Translation activities in the Organization of Intellectual Cooperation
  Thomas Davies Three Approaches to Transnational Intellectual Cooperation: The Entente Committee of the Royal Society of Literature, International PEN, and the Co-ordinating Committee of the Major International Associations, 1916-1939
17:10 CLOSING SESSION  
  Organizers Conclusion
17:30 End of the conference  
                                                                                                                               

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