Call for Papers
International Symposium organized by SELMA: Centre for the Study of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory
21–22 April 2023, University of Turku, Finland
Environmental Narratives: History, Memory, Trauma is a two-day symposium of presentations and discussions on experiencing, narrating, and remembering places in natural environments. The keynote speaker is Professor Helena Duffy (University of Wrocław, Poland/University of Warwick, UK). The title of her talk is “We Are Not out of the Woods Yet: The Forest as a Site of Polish Holocaust Memory in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida”.
The symposium’s theme is closely related to the interdisciplinary research conducted in the Centre for the Study of Storytelling, Experientiality and Memory (SELMA), which explores the interrelations between storytelling, experientiality, and cultural memory. They are especially interested in contributions examining traumatic histories of natural sites, people’s ways of experiencing and narrating specific places in nature, memories of water, forests and other natural environments, water and forests as poetic spaces of mind and memory, and representations of nature and the environment in literature and other media, and of the environmental change in the age of the Anthropocene. The concepts we are interested in exploring range from Simon Schama’s “landscape and memory” to Timothy Morton’s “ecological trauma”. They invite papers on these and related topics in fiction and non-fiction, film, poetry, cultural narratives, history, and folklore.
Timeline and Procedure:
Please send your abstract(200–250 words) for a 20-minute paper and a short bio (50– 100 words) to Markku Lehtimäki (markku.lehtimaki@utu.fi) by 15 November 2022.