We are seeking contributors to a special issue or edited volume on representations of ethnic deportations from Eastern and Central Europe to the Soviet Union (1930-during and after WWII) favoring representations from ethnic minority groups. Articles are not limited to but can focus on:

• First and second generation memory, postmemory (Hirsch) as expressed in life-writing, literary representations of all genres, art of all genres

• On “portable monuments” (Rigney), narratives/stories/histories that could be re-written, appropriated, and transformed in new contexts

• Cultural memory and translation, the circulation of memory between places and languages

• Analyses of varied forms of curating memory (online exhibits, traveling exhibits, museums, monuments, installations, performance, anniversaries and commemorations, film, documentaries)

• How, in the absence of a crystallized, hard memory, the historical documents and the representations analyzed serve as viable examples of soft memory that succeed in memorializing the forced labor camps experience in its collective and individual forms (‘Soft’ and ‘hard’ memory of deportation (Etkind) in collective and individual forms)

• New English translations of works (poems, songs, diary entrances, letters, postcards, notes, etc.) by ethnic deportees, if they are subject of analysis or commentary and relate to the cluster and do not exceed 5 pages.  

Please send proposals up to 1000-words proposals by July 1, 2023 to:

Oana Popescu Sandu opopescusa@usi.edu and Anca Luca Holden, aholden@amherst.edu