The inaugural issue of the Memory Studies Review “Memory and Environment” is out now! It is published in open access.
Editors-in-Chief: and Hanna Teichler
Abstract: The story of memory studies has been told as a tale of booms and waves. Most recently, a fourth wave of memory studies, responding to the environmental, ecocritical and post-humanist turn in the humanities, has been heralded (Craps et al., 2018). This Special Issue aims to trace and reflect upon the developments that have led to this fourth phase. At the outset, however, it needs to be acknowledged that we consider how memory and different forms of environment have long been understood as interrelated. Firstly, environments have featured as metaphors to focus attention on contexts of different kinds that are pertinent to acts of remembering. Secondly, environments have been considered as the background settings for memory processes: the places in which memory work is done. Thirdly, environments have been considered a functional parts of memory processes – where an environment serves as a media carrier of memory content that is actively involved in the transmission process. Although we chart how significant recent shifts in dominant modes of defining the term “environment” have impacted the field of memory studies and contributed to developments that have been construed as a fourth wave of memory studies, we argue that such a the fourth wave of memory studies does not represent a paradigmatic shift in our understanding of the relationship between memory and environment, but rather a shift in emphasis.
Memory Studies Review provides a unique platform for multidisciplinary research spanning a wide range of methodologies and theoretical frameworks across the field of Memory Studies. The journal is invested in exploring the ways in which the individual and collective, social and psychological, and political and cultural dimensions of remembering and forgetting interact with understandings of time, space, place, and scale.
The journal seeks to publish works that push the boundaries and advance the evolving area of Memory Studies by fostering interdisciplinary dialogues and theoretical debates, addressing current issues and emerging trends, and contributing to public discourse and agenda-setting.
We especially – but not exclusively – welcome scholarship exploring the relationship between memories and environments, for example through ecological, ecocritical, and post-humanist lenses, as well as work engaging innovative understandings of agency, the interrelations of subjectivity and materiality, and the human and non-human.
The journal seeks to publish works that push the boundaries and advance the evolving area of Memory Studies by fostering interdisciplinary dialogues and theoretical debates, addressing current issues and emerging trends, and contributing to public discourse and agenda-setting.
We especially – but not exclusively – welcome scholarship exploring the relationship between memories and environments, for example through ecological, ecocritical, and post-humanist lenses, as well as work engaging innovative understandings of agency, the interrelations of subjectivity and materiality, and the human and non-human.