CALL FOR PAPERS: Politics of Memory in postcommunist Europe EXTENDED DEADLINE!
Annals of the Romanian and East European Communism, new series, vol. 1/2010.
The first issue of our new series will focus on ‘Politics of Memory in postcommunist Europe’. The manner in which Communism is remembered or forgotten, and the very dynamics of this process represent crucial aspects of the Eastern European transition from totalitarianism to democracy. In the past five years, our Institute has pursued a thorough investigation of the legal and instititutional framework the former Communist regime in Romania. Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, scholars and researchers are invited to submit their contributions regarding the culture of remembrance and/or denial, allied with a politics of memory and/or oblivion, which have shaped Eastern Europe.
We welcome original contributions which discuss, ideally in a comparative perspective, the theme of memory in the light of the recent political, cultural and societal developments in the former Soviet bloc: Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, former GDR, Poland, USSR and former Yugoslavia. Case-studies as well as new theoretical contributions are encouraged.
Senior scholars, young researchers and PhD students are invited to submit their proposals on the following topics:
- Individual memory: Memory and nostalgia in the post-Socialist regimes: representations of the past in the auto-biographical literature written by victims of Communist, former dissidents, as well by former members of the nomenklatura. Nostalgia: how do age, class, religion, and gender influence various practices of remembrance (e.g., the imprisonment of intellectuals, the destruction of churches, the control of reproduction, etc)?
- The challenge of teaching history to younger generations, with no direct memory of Communism.
- Spaces and traces of memory: memorials and museums. Old and new representations of the Communist history in the national and regional museums: alternative discourses versus canonical history. Material culture and Memory. Visual culture and Memory. Does the physical evidence influence our way of remembering communism?
- The paradoxes of oral history: what do people remember of Communism? What type of attention structures their selective memory? Objective narrative vs. subjective histories? Personal memories vs. politics of memory? How is the recasting of the past negotiated between the goals of objective history versus the intentionality of personal narratives? Egohistory vs. macrohistory?
- Archives and Memory. The relationship between history and memory in remembering communism. Memory as matrix of the historiography: testimony vs. history?
The status of communist archives (including the special Archives: those belonging to the Secret Police or to the former Ministry of the Interior). Which ‘treasures of memory’ have been opened by the public institutions and what traces of the past have been erased?
- Conceptual approaches to the ‘Memory and History’: how do political institutions create, shape, influence, or manipulate collective and individual memory in the post-socialist countries?
The selected articles will be published in the volume Politics of Memory in post communist Europe by the end of 2010.
The deadline for submitting proposals is April 1st, 2010. Selected authors will be notified by 25th of April. In case of your admission, the deadline for rendering the full text is July 15th, 2010.
Your manuscript should have a minimum limit of 40.000 and a maximum of 60.000 characters, Times New Roman, 1.5 paragraphs, written in English, French, or German. For other details, please contact the co-editors.
We look forward to receiving your submissions.
Corina Palasan and Marius Stan
(IICCMER)