One of the main issues characterizing the current debate on social sciences (with a proliferation of Memory Studies especially since the 1980s in the Anglo-Saxon and European area) concern the role of memory not only related to its theoretical definition, but also referring to its possible use as an interpretative tool in the empirical analysis of social and cultural processes.

The studies on the social origin of memory have developed in different fields, from the sociology of Halbwachs, Assmann, Cohen, Lavabre, Zerubavel, Jedlowski, Namer, Jelin, to other philosophical and historical perspectives authors such as Nora, Ricoeur, Ost, Le Goff, Jenkins, Arendt, Benjamin, Kracauer... All these strands have contributed to a systematization of memory by placing it in a multidisciplinary field.

To remember we need others. This is because our memories, including the most intimate and

personal ones, only acquire meaning when they are shared with an emotional and social

community that will contribute to their elaboration. The memories of individuals are not, therefore, able to construct, in retrospect, social frames of reference, but are the tools used by the collective memory to recompose an image of the past that is incessantly modified and re-described orienting the future.

A noticeable contradiction emerges here, namely that memory is exercised starting from the present and not from the past. Reword: we only remember what we have reconstructed. Social thought itself is essentially the expression of metamemorial narratives: elaborations, recompositions, shapes, negotiations of memories, in dialectics between memory and oblivion, among the members of a more or less vast social group. There is no memory without a collective re-interpretation and renegotiation - and the category of counter-memory becomes relevant.

Starting from the issues related to memory – and from a sociological-cultural outlook above all - will be evaluated: contributions of an exclusively theoretical approach; contributions which, starting from empirical research, produce theoretical reflections on the topics of the call; contributions in which memory is an investigative tool for reading social and cultural change - i.e. the use of life stories, narrative interviews and other biographical tools in which memory assumes a prominent importance from a methodological point of view.

The subject matters and topics of the call could be, in a non-exclusive way:

⁃ Old and new narrative forms of memory.

⁃ Post-industrial memory.

⁃ Media and memory.

⁃ Memory, justice and power.

⁃ From post-colonial memories to migrant memories.

⁃ Memory and neuroscience.

Propositions presentation

The abstract (max 500 words) can be written in Italian or in English and sent at the email

addresses:

atelier.funes@gmail.com

marta.vignola@unisalento.it

bory@unina.it

The proposition needs to contain:

Name, Surname, Institue of provenience and academic position of the author;
Provisional title of the article;
Indication in the email Subject line: “Call: Shaping memories in contemporary narratives”
Times:

Abstract deadline: 25 July 2020

Results announced: 1st August 2020

Paper deadline: 20 September 2020

Referees’ decision: 5 October 2020

Final papers: 31 October 2020

Publication: November 2020

Accepted languages

English, Italian, French, Spanish