Dear colleagues
We're looking for a couple more papers to complete our panel at the AAG 2014. Please see below for more details.
Call for Papers: 2014 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Tampa, Fl, April 8-12, 2014
Understanding urban geographies of memory
Organisers:
Elly Harrowell (Birmingham University)
Pete McMenamin (Birmingham University)
In recent years the relationship between urban spaces and the memories of the groups that live in them, has witnessed a resurgence in popularity by geographers seeking to better understand the formation and politics of group identity. Since Nora’s framing of ‘lieux de mémoire’ brought collective memory to the forefront of critical enquiry, various attempts have been made to understand how communities use of their environments to store and transmit particular readings of the past in a range of social, cultural and socio-temporal contexts.
The subsequent ways in which these ‘memorial landscapes’ are negotiated, lived and serve to mediate identity and social relations, has proved fertile ground, with investigative approaches ranging from a reified and concretized cultural semiotics; through malleable and ever evolving notions of ‘becoming’; to more somatic, affective and performative appreciations.
Yet there remains much to learn regarding how this process works, who controls it, to what extent it is effective in building group identity (and why), how this changes over time, and what happens when multiple narratives of memory collide in the built environment. Increasingly such questions are seen as pertinent in the conditions and aftermath of ruptures in community life, be they as a consequence of conflict, regime change or other causes.
This session seeks to draw upon these themes, bringing together a variety of scholars whose different yet overlapping interests seek to illuminate the connections between memory, landscape and identity. Contributions are encouraged that address related themes including (but not limited to):
- Memory in post-conflict or post-crisis environments
- Building memory and identity in post-socialist cities
- The afterlife of monuments
- New forms of commemoration
- Identifying street level memories and informal commemorative spaces
- Conflicts over commemorative spaces
- Museums, memorial parks and other official commemorative interventions
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] by Monday 18th of November.
Many thanks,
Elly Harrowell
Doctoral Researcher
Centre for Urban and Regional Studies
School of Geography Earth and Environmental Sciences
University of Birmingham
Tel. +44 7969 556 388/ +996 552 066 012
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Twitter: @Harrowelly
|