Beckett Studies has changed radically since Richard Gilman claimed that Beckett's imagination worked "almost entirely outside history". In recent years, much work has been done to recover the relevant social and cultural contexts for Beckett's work, and this process has been greatly expedited by continuing efforts to disseminate the contents of the many drafts and manuscripts housed in the archives.
   
  That said there is still a considerable amount of resistance to the historicizing of Beckett's texts, which suggests that more work needs to be done in this area. To that end, essays are requested for a new volume addressing all aspects of the historical debate in Beckett Studies. Entitled Samuel Beckett: History, Memory, Archive, the volume will trace Beckett's continuing engagement with historical issues paying special attention to problems of history-memory as evinced by his work. There will also be a strong emphasis on processual analyses of Beckett's manuscripts, in order to trace what S.E. Gontarski has termed Beckett's "intent of undoing" through successive drafts.
   
  Possible topics might include:
   

    History, Memory and Forgetting
  Cultural Memory and its Discontents
  Archives and Authority
  Blocked Memories/Disavowed Histories
  Realms of Memory/ Re-placing Memory
  Nation and Narration
  Commemoration and/or Rememoration
  Memory and Mourning
  Naming and Amnesia
  (Dis)Embodied Memory

   
  Essays addressing all aspects of the historical debate will be considered. Please send 500 word proposals and a short C.V. by 30th August 2006, to Seán Kennedy, Department of English, St Mary's University, Halifax (sean.kennedy_at_smu.ca), and/or Katherine Weiss, Department of English, East Tennessee State University (kweiss73_at_yahoo.com).
   
  A preliminary selection of essays will be sent to publishers as part of an overall proposal. Acceptance of a proposal does not guarantee inclusion until the peer review process has been completed by the relevant publishing company. Contributors are asked to indicate whether they would consider going on stand-by in the event of drop-outs.
   
                                                                                                                                                  
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Received on Tue Mar 28 2006 - 09:31:20 EST