Call for Papers

Congress Achievements and Perspectives of Cultural and Social Memory Research

Deadline for application submissions: May 15, 2023

Memory studies and its offshoot within the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of memory, have attracted considerable attention in recent decades, not just in the social sciences and cultural studies, but also beyond these fields. Diverse approaches, perspectives, empirical objects and methods have emerged. As a result, the engagement of cultural studies scholars and social scientists with memory – in the sense of an organization of connections to the past – appears as a multi-paradigmatic undertaking, guided by different interests, basic terms and concepts. Against this background, the aim of the congress Achievements and Perspectives of Cultural and Social Memory Research is to review what has already been achieved, discuss key theoretical approaches and methods, and talk about perspectives for the ongoing development of these theories and methods.

The individual papers should offer a critical retrospective and identify prospects for the future of memory studies in general or the sociology of memory in particular. We would like to invite theoretically and/or empirically oriented contributions along the following central lines of discussion:

1)Theoretical lines of tradition and development

2) Methodological implications

3) Subject areas

4) Interdisciplinarity

The conference celebrates the completion of the Handbuch Sozialwissenschaftliche Gedächtnisforschung/Handbook of Social Memory Research.

Confirmed Keynote speakers: Wulf Kansteiner (Aarhus), Susanne Buckley-Zistel (Marburg), Jeffrey K. Olick (Charlottesville/Virginia), Andrew Hoskins (Glasgow), Emily Keightley (Loughborough), Astrid Erll (Frankfurt), Achim Landwehr (Düsseldorf).


Timeline and Procedure:

Please send abstracts (or panel proposals) with a maximum of 400 words by 15 May 2023 to Oliver Dimbath (dimbath@uni-koblenz.de), Nina Leonhard (nina.leonhard@berlin.de), Mathias Berek (berek@tu-berlin.de) and Gerd Sebald (gerd.sebald@fau.de).

Further information is available in the pdf below: