Remembering/ Representing/ Signifying

Coordinators

Barbara Schaff, University of Göttingen, Germany, bschaff[at]gwdg.de

Maki Kimura, University College London, UK, maki.kimura[at]ucl.ac.uk

Biljana Oklopčić, University of Osijek, Croatia, biljana.oklopcic[at]gmail.com

Helena Wahlström Henriksson, Uppsala University, Sweden, helena.henriksson[at]gender.uu.se

This stream aims at promoting a transdisciplinary discussion of the relationship between gender and memory. Memories emerge and signify social frameworks; they are represented in literature and art and are embedded in social practices. Memories are signified and mediated as well as ‘affected’ and embodied, thus shaping our cultural consciousness in multiple ways. This stream hopes to address the inter-relatedness of gender and memory and raise questions regarding how the category of gender figures in the construction, representation and signification of memory. A basic assumption is that gendered signification is always variable, dependent on changing historical, social and cultural contexts. We are particularly interested in investigations of how gendered cultural configurations, tropes, images and practices operate, circulate and change over time due to shifting ideological settings.

We invite proposals from all disciplinary and methodological perspectives that investigate the work that representations of gender and memory do in various contexts, local and global: witnessing and mediating history/histories, performing memorial practices, producing sites of memory or changing significations and representations of memory.

Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:

Gendered memory and mediated representations

Gendered language of trauma and loss

The signification / resignification of gendered cultural configurations, tropes and images

Fetishised femininity/masculinity and memory

Feminist and/or queer theorizing of public memory discourses and practices

Dominant and marginalised gendered memory discourses

Embodied memory practices

Gender in public history and popular history

Queer sites of memory / Countermonuments and gender

Gendered practices of war commemoration

Gendered politics of memorials and memorial/heritage sites

Gendered representations of colonial legacies