What we remember about the past is as crucial as why we remember and for what we remember. Remembering occurs in specific cultural and political formats through which the past is invoked as a means to various, and often incompatible, ends. At the same time, the multifarious commemorative practices of the past have a presentist dimension, referring to the fact that social and cultural construction of memory narratives is co-constituted by the prerequisites and imminences of the present. This approach to the commemorations of history can enhance collective solidarity, both at the national level and beyond. Yet, some actors might identify themselves with formats which question or outright oppose the established representations of the pasts, employing a different rhetoric which is further displayed through revisionist formats of cultural memory politics.
The special issue seeks to disentangle the various cultural and political settings in which memory narratives are produced. We welcome theoretical contributions, comparative studies as well as case studies providing a broad range of perspectives on historical narratives and memory politics in North America, Europe, and Eurasia in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
- cultural trauma and national victimhood;
- art and cultural production as ethical witnesses of troubled past;
- construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of national metanarratives;
- memory discourse and collective identity;
- encoding, preserving, and transmitting memory;
- memory wars and the great power politics;
- state and non-state actors in construction of collective memory;
- silence, denial, and forgetting;
- commemorative practices and politics;
- politics of monuments, museums, and lieux de mémoire;
- symbols, meanings, and rituals as a means of nation formation;
- decolonization, memory, and decolonization of memory;
- engineering history to fit illiberal, anti-migrant, anti-Semitic or homophobic agendas;
- recent methodological trends and approaches to the study of collective memory.
The articles should be ideally 6,000 to 9,000 words long (excluding footnotes and abstract). The contributions should be sent to the editorial team at stuter@fsv.cuni.cz or uploaded via the AUC Studia Territorialia journal management system. The authors should consult the submission guidelines for further instructions and style at https://stuter.fsv.cuni.cz/index.php/stuter/about/submissions#authorGuidelines. All contributions will be subject to double-blind peer-review.
Abstract submission deadline: August 31, 2020.
Notification on further status: September 15, 2020.
Article submission deadline: October 31, 2020.
Acta Universitatis Carolinae – Studia Territorialia is a leading Czech peer-reviewed academic journal focusing on area studies. It covers history, social, political, and economic affairs of the nations of North America, Europe, and post-Soviet Eurasia in the 20th and 21st centuries. The journal is published by the Institute of International Studies of Charles University, Prague. It is indexed, i.a., in the EBSCO, ERIH PLUS, DOAJ and CEEOL databases.