CfP | 2024 SIS PG Colloquium “Memory and Italian Culture”

CfP | 2024 SIS PG Colloquium 

“Memory and Italian Culture”

University College Cork

6 December 2024, in-person

Dr Dora Allman Room, The Hub

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Stefania Lucamante (University of Cagliari)

Dr Silvia Ross (University College Cork)

?This year, the Society for Italian Studies is delighted to welcome postgraduate students working in the area of Memory Studies and Italian Culture to submit an abstract for the 2024 SIS PG Colloquium at University College Cork. The SIS PG Colloquium provides a friendly environment that fosters exchange among postgraduate students, encouraging researchers working on any medium of Italian culture in any historical period to present papers that engage with the construction, contestation, or (re)negotiation of individual, collective, or transnational memory.

Astrid Erll defines “memory” as “an umbrella term for all those processes of a biological, medial, or social nature which relate past and present (and future) in sociocultural contexts” (Memory in Culture 7). Scholars such as Michael Rothberg, in his pivotal work on multidirectional memory, have opened up the possibility of exploring how diverse memory cultures can interact and influence each other, while Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory provides a framework for understanding how memories are transmitted generationally. Meanwhile, Allison Landsberg’s notion of prosthetic memory formulates how memories belonging to those of other times and places can be transmitted through cultural media in “an affective process through which one sutures himself or herself into a larger history” (Prosthetic Memory 2).

The 2024 SIS PG Colloquium provides an opportunity to engage with these concepts (and others) and to build on recent scholarship at the intersection of Memory Studies and Italian Culture, for example, Abignente (2021) on the family memoir; Bartolini on memories of the Axis War (2021); De Rogatis and Wehling-Giorgi (2022) on women’s trauma narratives; and Josi on literary representations of the Shoah (2023).

The Colloquium will explore questions such as the following: what is the relationship between cultural production and collective memory? How is memory transmitted generationally? How have marginalised histories been silenced/narrated? In what ways does memory transcend national borders? How do memories of disparate historical events interact? Topics may include, but are by no means limited to, the following:

• Colonial Memory

• Digital Memory

• Family Memory

• Gender and Memory

• Intertextual Memory

• Memory and Material Culture

• Memory and the Environment

• Memory of the Shoah

• Migration and Memory

• Multimedial Memory

• Queer Memories

• Trauma and Memory

Papers may be in English (preferred) or Italian and should be a maximum of fifteen minutes.

MA students and doctoral students in Italian Studies are highly encouraged to send their proposals. Five small travel grants (three of £100 and 2 of £50) will be awarded to postgraduate students who are not benefitting from the financial support of full scholarships. Those interested in presenting a paper should send a short abstract (max. 250 words) and a biographical note (max. 150 words) to Noreen Kane and Francesca Nieddu at memoryanditalianculture@gmail.com by 13 September 2024.

Submission is open to registered SIS members who have paid the membership fee. Please note that PG students can become members of the Society at a reduced fee.

Contributors may be invited to publish an article based on the papers they present at the Colloquium in the peer-reviewed journal Notes on Italian Studies.

Timeline:

Abstracts deadline: 13 September 2024

Notification of acceptance: 23 September 2024

Date of Colloquium: 6 December 2024

Publication of Notes on Italian Studies: 2025