Archive for calls, August 2011

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[ecrea] CFP: Re-enacting the Past: Memory, Materiality, Performance

Wed Aug 17 13:39:43 GMT 2011




*Re-enacting the Past: Memory, Materiality, Performance*

Call for papers, special issue of /theInternational Journal of Heritage Studies/



This special issue focuses on /re-enacting the past/:that is, on performances that act and re-act upon past events by processes ofmimesis or (selective) repetition. In recent years, a great deal of compelling research has emerged on narrative, visual and material /representations/ of the past. Few scholars, however, have addressedthe manifold processes, performances and collaborations through which pastevents are re-staged and re-presenced, and analysed them as such. Thus, in thisspecial issue we will focus on the more-than-representational layers in /presenting/ the past, the mediated representationsfrom which re-enactments often draw their inspiration, as well as the politicsof such re-performances.  We seekto explore various processes related to heritage performance and the "production of presence" (Gumbrecht 2004) forming around, and referring to past events and scenarios. In addition, we will take up the question of why these processes and performancesare important subjects for scholarly critique within heritage studies.


Re-enactment as a term is well known from studies in history and historiography, especially from Collingwood's theories on "history as re-enactment of past experience". In such studies, the concept of re-enactment is almost invariably tied to discussions on the relationship and level of similarity between past and present experience (Dilthey, Ankersmit). In contrast to historical studies of this kind, we want to focus more sharply on the work 'history' does in the present and on the concerns and consequences of such 'doing'. The consequences of re-performing pastevents and scenarios can be manifold: it may involve an /exoticism/ of the past, as in some nostalgic tourist and cultural heritage locations; it can produce /learning /through bodily practices that re-create past gestures, rituals and performances(e.g. time travels, festivals, advanced tourist learning concepts, Gulagtourism), it may seek a /healing/ and/or/socially/ /transformative/ effect through retelling and re-membering traumatic or violent pasts, or it can serve to invoke /empathy /and/or /heightened awareness/ by re-vitalizing forgotten, abject, repressed or difficult pasts.

While opening the field of heritagestudies to various forms of re-enactment, we wish to foreground bodily andspatial engagements and performances, as well as the crucial role of objects, inscription technologies and other 'non-human actors' (Latour). By ' thinking through things' (Henare et al. 2007) as well as through medias we invite contributors to view technological empowerment, material quality andartifactual power as going beyond representation and empowering processes of re-enacting and memorializing. Also, the role (and experience) of /time/ and temporality is often critical, as such re-stagings often attempt to somehow break, stop or even symbolically reverse time.


Bracketing issues of representation,rationality and knowledge, we seek instead to highlight dimensions of affect,vitality, immediacy and/or experience. We aim to contribute to themethodological and theoretical development of memory analysis within heritageand cultural studies, understood broadly as non-representational /practice/, by exploring the multilayeredeffects of various instances of re-staging and by reinvigorating the past withinthe present. We thus invite scholars interested in investigating re-enactment to submit their abstracts to Britta Timm Knudsen ((norbtk /at/ hum.au.dk) <mailto:(norbtk /at/ hum.au.dk)>), Mads Daugbjerg ((mads.daugbjerg /at/ hum.au.dk) <mailto:(mads.daugbjerg /at/ hum.au.dk)>) or Rivka Eisner ((ihorei /at/ hum.au.dk) <mailto:(ihorei /at/ hum.au.dk)>).Final articles should be between 6000 and 8000 words including notes and references and must be accompanied by a 150 word abstract and up to six key words.



Possible questions and topic areas include:

How is thepast acted or re-acted upon? What is /altered/, and what is kept the same, through different performative acts that serve to commemorate, enliven orreconcile past events?

By what kinds of present markers (e.g. dimensions of affect, vitality, and/or immediacy) isthe past re-enchanted or re-invigorated within tourist or nostalgic settings,in reenactment societies or among individuals or groups who seek to re-createpast gestures, rituals or performances?

What notions of temporality are involved in understanding the overall spatial logics ofperformative acts and re-enactments?

Are distinctions between different framings of the re-enactment still relevant(such as recreations of history as art, e.g. Jeremy Deller)?

How does one distinguish between different re-enactment gestures, the uses of varioustechnologies and medias, and their conceptual consequences (imitations,citations, remediations, re-enactments, repetitions, re-creations)?

How are heritage re-enactments created, experienced and understood differently (or similarly) invarious cultural contexts and by different groups?

In what ways are re-enactments designed or intended for different audiences? What difference does the question of "audience" make?

How does experiencing the past, or heritage, through re-enactments initiate learningprocesses? What different sorts of politics arise when addressing "firsthand" and "secondhand" memory of the past and its pedagogically oriented re-enactments?


*Due Dates*

Abstracts: November 1,2011

First drafts: April 1,2012

Reviews returned:

Final drafts:

Submission to Journal:



Please use the IJHSstyle guide: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/style/layout/tf_1.pdf

Quick guide: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/style/layout/tf_quick1-4.pdf

Additional information: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1352-7258&linktype=44 <http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1352-7258&linktype=44>



All submissions will go through the full IJHS review process.



Britta Timm Knudsen
lektor, ph.d./Associate Professor Ph.D.
Nordisk Institut/Scandinavian Institute
Jens Chr.  Skousvej 7, 467/324
Aarhus Universitet/Aarhus University
8000 Aarhus C
Denmark
t: 89422450 /29263916 /86163070
e: (norbtk /at/ hum.au.dk) <mailto:(norbtk /at/ hum.au.dk)>
http://person.au.dk/en/norbtk@hum



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