Call for Papers: Routledge Companion to Media and Memory

“We are seeking chapter proposals for the Routledge Companion to Media and Memory, edited by Joanne Garde-Hansen and Red Chidgey. With over 50+ global contributions, this volume will create an essential resource for engaging with established, emergent, and future directions in media and memory research. Covering diverse media, cultural, and communication forms, practices, and discourse, the Companion will include chapters on cinema, television, music, gaming, social media, and journalism, as well as museums, heritage, fan-made texts, digital Innovation, and advanced global media production.

After a first round of commissioning chapters, we are seeking further contributions. We especially welcome work positioned outside of the global north and/or that engages with the desired topics outlined below. We also encourage contributions that embed and explore feminist, queer, decolonial, anti-racist, environmental, disability-informed, and capital-critical perspectives.

The book will be organised into five sections:

Introductory Chapter (Red Chidgey and Jo Garde-Hansen)

Section 1, “Media Forms, Practices and Audiences” (5000 words) will provide readers with a critical overview of literature on particular forms, practices and audience understandings, underpinned by a research-led case study focus. Desired topics include but are not limited to: migration and documentary filmmaking; advertising, branding and memory; cinema and memory; indigenous media and memory work.

Section 2, “Media Memory Industries and Institutions” 5000 words) establishes the connection between memory work and industry. Desired topics include but are not limited to: Netflix and nostalgic programming; EU right to be forgotten; copyright, intellectual property and memory; transmedia and immersive memory; the memory worker in media industries; how media organisations/corporations remember themselves.

Section 3, “Creativity and Critique” (5000 words) creates a space to propose new theoretical approaches to the study of media and memory, alongside new practitioner practices and innovations within the creative industries, media, art and heritage sectors. Desired topics include but are not limited to: decolonising media memory studies; use of AI, augmented reality, virtual reality and web 3.0 in creative and artistic memory-led approaches; DIY and fan-made memories.

Section 4, “Methods and Research Practices” (4000 words),reflexively explores ways of working with media for memory-informed research. These contributions will introduce readers to new methodologies that they can use in their own practice. Desired topics include but are not limited to data diaries; deep listening; social media-based methods; collaborative and co-designed approaches; open heritage gamification; rapid response collecting; mass-observation archives; slow methods; remembering embodied experiences of war, violence, or abuse through creative practice.

Section 5, “Media, Memory, World-Building and Activism” engages with activist-informed case studies and sets out a vision for future concerns in the field of media and memory. Desired topics include but are not limited to: uses of memory by far-right

Contributor Timeframe:

• 15 December 2024 – abstract, to include title of contribution, the proposed section and proposed approach [500 words max], and author bio [150 words max, to include your institutional affiliation (if applicable), email address and ORCID-number (if you have one).
• 31 January 2025 – proposal acceptance and contracting
• 30 June 2025- contributors submit first draſts of chapters
• 30 September 2025 – editors return annotated draſts to authors for revision
• 30 November 2025 – contributors submit final draſts Please submit an abstract and bio [see guidance above] by 15 December 2024 to the co-editors at j.garde-hansen@leeds.ac.uk and red.chidgey@kcl.ac.uk with the subject line ‘Media Memory Chapter Proposal’. Please include both co-editors in your email submission.

Feel free also to email with any questions in advance of the submission date”.