(Extended Deadline)

MEMORY

University of Virginia Department of English Graduate Symposium

March 27 & 28, 2026

Neuroscience tells us that the act of remembering is a dynamic process. We do not recall static, immutable memories. Rather, each recollection is subject to reconstitution, interpretation, and adjustments in neural pathways. So too is memory a dynamic cultural phenomenon: we engage in the creative editing of what was once and exalt the "what-if" in our literature and our institutions. The work of memory becomes the narrativizing of time and the construction of identity, leading one to ask: What is remembered, what is forgotten, and why?

The University of Virginia’s Graduate Symposium invites graduate students working in the arts and humanities across Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. to examine how memory operates in their research. At what point does memory start? In whom or what does memory live? Who decides “correct” interpretations of the past when multiple or contested versions exist? What is the curatorial or reparative work of institutions in relation to memory? How, essentially, does your work engage with, draw from, or reflect on memory—its processes, effects, and remains?

The Symposium is a space to explore this topic in its most expansive and minute forms, from questions of individual memoir and narrative reliability to place-based memory and historical (re)interpretations. We encourage interdisciplinarity and perspectives from diverse and wide-ranging fields of study. Potential topics to be addressed may include: 

• Editions and bibliography
• Material cultures
• Literary traditions and their canons
• Somatic memory
• Monuments and memorialization 
• Griots, bards, jesters, and other ve/va-ssels of memory
• Aesthetic and poetic forms
• Digital cultures, new archives, and lost media
• Narratology and rhetorics of memory
• Autobiography, memoir, and personal history
• Re-memory and remembrance
• Cultural amnesia and deracination 
• Diasporic memory
• Wakework and mourning
• Science fiction temporalities and future history
• Pedagogies of learning

Presentations should be no longer than 12-15 minutes. In addition to accepting traditional academic papers, we also encourage submissions featuring creative work with academic components (such as creative nonfiction, documentary poetics, or multimedia presentations). Please specify in your submission whether any alternative categories apply to your paper and if you would require AV equipment. 

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short bio to our Microsoft form by Monday, January 19, 2025, at 11:59pm Eastern time. 

Contact the Graduate Symposium co-chairs Ki Bailey (ktn6hk@virginia.edu) and Maggie Schlich (fkh4wy@virginia.edu) with any questions