cfp.english.upenn.edu

The power of things
inheres in the memories
they gather up inside them,
and also in the vicissitudes of our imagination,
and our memory - of this there is no doubt.
-Orhan Pamuk, Museum of Innocence

As a result of recent developments in the fields of literary theory, psychology, anthropology, and history, there has been a radical shift in the concept of memory. No longer thought of as simple recollection or a retrieval of “stored ideas,” memory is now conceived as a reflexive process, one informed by the social and cultural realities of the remembering subject. For some, memory is an inescapable condition for dealing with the present – an uncanny “weight” that demands, yet resists, articulation. And for others memory is a way to rethink the inherent pluralisms of time – a tool used to liberate oneself from the confines of historical or national narrative. As evidenced in the numerous literary meditations on remembrance by authors such as Orhan Pamuk and John Banville, for example, and in the political and scientific concerns about new technologies and how mass media archives the past, the topic of memory has become an increasingly salient field of inquiry.

As part of our commitment to publishing original and innovative research, the editors of Trespassing are now soliciting essays that address the topic of memory and its shifting role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Transnational and transdisciplinary in scope, this issue will investigate lines of inquiry concerning the relationship between fiction and memoir, memory’s relationship to material objects, and the interrelations between mass media and collective memory. How, for example, does memory shape our identity and place in culture? What is the relationship between memory and desire? In what ways is history shaped through the dynamics of remembering and forgetting? And perhaps a more pressing question in light of our increasingly digitized world: Do certain forms of social media and digital technology threaten our capacity to remember the past critically? Or do they open up new spaces for the thoughtful evaluation and resolution of what were once conflicting representations of the past?

Areas of exploration and inquiry include but are not limited to:

The Media of Collective Memory
Rethinking Museums as Site of Cultural Memory
Memory and Desire
Hipster Subculture: Parody and Pop Culture
Memory and the Culture Industry: “Instagram,” Facebook’s “Timeline,” “Tumblr”
Photography as Memory
Contemporary Forms of Elegy
Autobiography through Film or Television
Memory and Neuroscience
The Language of Trauma
Rethinking Nostalgia
Automatism and Aleatory Memory
Memory and the Oral or Folk Tradition
Memory, Violence, and Fantastic Forms

Prospective contributors should submit an abstract of approximately 500 words and a brief resume by
April 1, 2013 to aheney1@johnshopkins.edu

Our guest editor for this issue is Alison Heney

Selected authors will be invited to submit full papers (of maximum 9000 words) according to the style guidelines. Acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee publication since all papers will be subject to double blind peer-review. Submissions are accepted in English.

http://trespassingjournal.com/