Call for essays: Culture Theory and Critique special themed issue on Crossroads of Memory

This special issue on the "Crossroads of Memory" seeks to bring  together scholars of various literary and cultural traditions eager to  bring into dialogue different theoretical approaches to memory. For  prominent Memory Studies critic Pierre Nora, historiography represents  the unified language of nationalism with its sanctioned institutions  and apparatuses, while memory is the dialect of particular loci:  regional, local, familial, ethnic, or racial. Nora?s distinction  between history and memory is increasingly questioned in various  disciplines. "Crossroads of Memories" is a contribution to this  questioning. Are mobilizations of the past uniquely local, national,  or global?

This collection seeks a more dynamic view of memory that localizes it  simultaneously in multiple spheres: private and public; local,  regional, and transnational; in written texts and non-written  artifacts. Unlike Nora?s seminal concept of realms of memory, the  crossroads of memory would illuminate how memories can simultaneously  carry multiple meanings according to one's positioning. Embodied in  the metaphor of the crossroads where flows of populations and cultures  meet and leave trails, multilocality often highlights how memories  shift as they circulate within and across local, national, and ethnic  communities. The crossroads, thus, represents a site where multiple or  different kinds of memory are constantly juxtaposed, contested,  rearticulated, and mediated 
according to different individual social  class, needs, historical contexts, and political ends. As such, the  crossroads demonstrates the potency of conflict and power dynamics  (evidenced in censorship and silences) in the emergence and  representation of collective memories.

We invite essays that explore tensions among different  conceptualizations of memory. Possible areas of examination include, but are not restricted to:

• Social class and memory
• Race, ethnicity, or immigration and memory
• Memory and space. Localizing memories in museums, monuments,  landscape, cityscape, etc.
• Performative memories
• Duty to memory
• Visual culture and memory

We welcome essays that address any of these issues.  The questions are  not meant to be proscriptive, however, and we welcome queries about  possible article content. We welcome submissions from graduate students.

Essays need to be submitted for peer review by Oct 1, 2011; length of  final essays to be 5,000-7,000 words including notes.

Send abstracts and essays to Jen Heusel, editorial assistant to ctcjourn@indiana.edu

Culture, Theory and Critique is a refereed, interdisciplinary journal  for the transformation and development of critical theories in the  humanities and social sciences. It aims to critique and reconstruct  theories by interfacing them with one another and by relocating them  in new sites and conjunctures. Culture, Theory and Critique' approach  to theoretical refinement and innovation is one of interaction and hybridization via recontextualization and transculturation.