Call for papers

The 2022 International Conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association

Memory and Forgetting

Hosted Online from the University of Melbourne, Australia (throughout the world) 30 September-1 October 2022 

 

This conference invites papers on the theme of memory and forgetting. Memory is malleable. It is shaped by selection, by mediation, by transmission, by ideologies, by societies and, above all, by forgetting. In the words of Ann Rigney,

 

‘like water transported in a leaky bucket which slowly runs dry, [memories] are continuously being lost along the way’.

 

And yet, the archive contains a multiplicity of memories that have survived their journeys, that have been remade in their transmission, and continue to be remade as historians select those memories that speak to particular perspectives or narratives. What can we say about this selective approach to the archive? An approach that often masquerades as ʹmemoryʹ ‐ in terms of presenting a distinct narrative ‐ and ʹforgettingʹ ‐ in terms of omission, whether deliberate or through ignorance or inattention. This conference examines the process of how early medieval societies created their pasts and, in turn, how those pasts have continued to be created in subsequent centuries.

This conference calls for papers that relate to this theme, or, in the spirit of the theme, that do not. Topics might include:

• Agendas and identities
• Biography and autobiography
• Individual and cultural memory
• Oral and textual histories
• Transmission and reimaginings
• Education and memoria
• Transnational and global memory
• Memory of conflict – forgetting of peace

 

Submissions may be in the form of individual papers of 20 minutes duration, themed panels of three 20‐minute papers, or Round Tables of up to six shorter papers (total of one hour). All sessions will include time for questions and general discussion.

Please send proposals (150–200 words per paper), along with author’s name, paper/panel/RT title, and academic affiliation (if any) to conference@aema.net.au by 9 September 2022.