Vol. 42 No. 1 | March 2016

Call for Papers

Memories on the Move: Asian Connections 

Deadline for Submissions: June 30, 2015

The last couple of decades have witnessed the emergence of memory as a central concern in contemporary culture and politics. Scholars have assigned this world wide upsurge to the aftermath of decolonization and the 1960s social movements, the debates about the Holocaust in Europe and the US (Huyssen), the acceleration of history (Nora), or more largely to a multiplicity of social, cultural and economic trends and developments of an eclectic but intersecting nature (Winter). Memory studies has emerged as a new interdisciplinary field of critical inquiry that maps practices of personal and public remembrance and traces the cultural dynamics through which mediations of the past shape collective identities and inform social or political action. Moreover, memory discourses and practices have played a crucial role in forms of transitional justice, public apologies, reconciliation, and human rights.

If early scholarly attention focused on specific national memory culture, the ways in which memories are shared within particular communities and constitute or reinforce group identity (Halbwachs, Nora), in the last ten years there has been a gradual shift towards comparative, interdisciplinary, and border-crossing perspectives. Studies on cosmopolitan memory (Levy and Sznaider), multidirectional memory (Rothberg), transcultural memory (Crownshaw), travelling memory (Erll), or transnational memory (De Chesari and Rigney) highlight the circulatory, competing, overlapping, fluid and dynamic nature of the processes of remembrance and cultural memory. 

This special issue attempts to further the inquiry into the dynamic nature of memory cultures by forging dialogue between mnemonic contexts in/about Asia and those in Europe, North America, Australia, etc. How do forms of memorialization and cultural memories from/about Asia inflect or how are they inflected by various forms of transnational communication and exchange, or, more generally, the structures of global interaction? How do memory discourses from or about Asia circulate, migrate, or travel, and to what end? What “connective” relations (Hirsch) and convergences between national, regional, and global contexts are articulated in cultural texts (literary, media) when remembering landmark historical events across continents? Alternatively, what forms of disjuncture, ideological, and material blockages prevent connections and the circulation of memory in the global age? 

We welcome contributions that examine how the “past within us” (Morris-Suzuki) or East Asia’s “difficult pasts” (Kim and Schwartz) resurface in representations across spaces, media or archives, and the ways they produce and/or subvert official state narratives. We are interested in new forms of “perilous memories” (Fujitani et al), individual or collective remembrances of “ruptured histories” (Jager and Mitter) embodied in fiction, memoirs, graphic narratives, documentaries, films or memorializing objects at large and their convergences across time and space. We invite research that broadly engages with memories on the move as well as the analytical frames about “memory in the global age” (Assmann and Conrad) and their possible junctions with or within Asia.

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Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, currently indexed in Arts and Humanities Citation Index, is a peer-reviewed journal published two times per year by the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. Concentric is devoted to offering innovative perspectives on literary and cultural issues and advancing the transcultural exchange of ideas. While committed to bringing Asian-based scholarship to the world academic community, Concentric welcomes original contributions from diverse national and cultural backgrounds. Each issue of Concentric publishes groups of essays on a special topic as well as papers on more general issues. The focus can be on any historical period and any region. 

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Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 

Manuscript Submission Guidelines 

1. Manuscripts should be submitted in English. Please send the manuscript, an abstract of no more than 250 words with 5-8 keywords, and a brief bio as Word attachments to <concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw>. Please also attach a cover letter stating that the manuscript is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere. Concentric will acknowledge receipt of the submission but will not return it after review. 

2. Submissions made to the journal should generally be at least 6,000 words but should not exceed 10,000 words, notes included; the bibliography is not counted. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the latest edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Except for footnotes, which should be single-spaced, manuscripts must be double-spaced throughout and typeset in 12-point Times New Roman. For further instructions on documentation, consult our style guide. 

3. To facilitate the journal’s anonymous refereeing process, there must be no indication of personal identity or institutional affiliation in the manuscript proper. The author may cite his/her previous works, but only in the third person. 

4. If the paper has been published or submitted elsewhere in a language other than English, please also submit a copy of the non-English version. Concentric may not consider submissions already available in other languages. 

5. If the author wishes to include copyrighted images in the essay, the author is solely responsible for obtaining permission for the images. 

6. Two copies of the journal and a PDF version of the published essay will be provided to the author(s) upon publication. 

7. It is the journal’s policy to require all authors to sign an assignment of copyright. 

For submissions or general inquiries, please contact us as follows: 

Editor, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 

Department of English 

National Taiwan Normal University 

162 Heping East Road, Section 1 

Taipei 106, Taiwan 

Phone: +886 (0)2 77341803

Fax: +886 (0)2 23634793

E-mail: concentric.lit@deps.ntnu.edu.tw

英語學系《同心圓》期刊執行編輯 何秉融

Tel: 02-77341795

Email: hopingjung@ntnu.edu.tw