Call for Papers: Representations of Memory in Film

Terence McSweeney (University of Essex) and Alistair Harvey (University of Winchester) solicit proposals for a collection of essays entitled 'Representations of Memory in Film'.

We invite any academic approach to the term memory and its depiction in the cinematic art including, for example, philosophical, psychological, social psychological, cultural, filmic and personal reflections on the film-going experience.

Just as Jennifer Wise, in her book Dionysus Writes: The Invention of Theatre in Ancient Greece contends that 'the existence of writing changed memory.' It is equally the case that the invention of the cinematic medium changed memory, arguably, in even more powerful ways. The late Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky asserted 'for the first time in the history of the arts, in the history of culture, man has found the means to take an impression of time, and simultaneously the possibility of reproducing that time on screen as often as he wanted.'

The volume intends to explore this 'impression of time' and the films addressed should either be explicitly about memory or at least reflective of the memory process. Below is an indicative list of films we are considering exploring, however, we will consider articles on any film related to memory.

Y After Life (Koreeda, 2001) Japan

Y Ararat (Egoyan, 2002) Canada

Y Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004) US

Y La Jetée (Marker, 1962) France

Y The Man Without a Past (Kaurismäki <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0442454/> , 2002) Finland

Y Memento (Nolan, 2000) US

Y Open Your Eyes (Amenábar <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0024622/> , 1997) Spain

Y Random Harvest (LeRoy, 1942) US

Y Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1951) Japan

Y The Red Squirrel (Medem, 1993) Spain

Y Tarnation (Caouette, 2003) US

Y Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990) US

(For a more extensive list of memory related films please contact the editors.)

There are particular areas of memory/memory theory and authors/theorists/ philosophers we have a particular interest in, but we will consider any proposal with academic merit. These include amnesia, autobiographic memory, episodic memory, consciousness, collective memory, prosthetic memories, technologizing experience, communication of experience, notions of selfhood in relation to memory, Deleuze, Bergson, Hegel, Middleton and Brown, Proust, Robbe-Grillet.

Please send proposals of up to 500 words (in Microsoft Word; the file name should be labelled with the letters MEM and your last name-for example, MEM.HARVEY.doc) to BOTH Terence McSweeney <tmcswe_at_essex.ac.uk> and Alistair Harvey <alistair.harvey_at_winchester.ac.uk > by December 31st, 2006. Also include *within* the proposal a brief overview of your published work.

The projected deadlines for first and final drafts will be spring 2007 and summer 2007, respectively. Send queries to <tmcswe_at_essex.ac.uk <mailto:rhonda_w_at_gdn.edu> >.

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Received on Fri Oct 06 2006 - 15:59:50 EDT