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Host: Keele University
Organizers: Richard Crownshaw, Monica Pearl
Description:
Cultural memory has attracted increasing and varied academic attention
across disciplines in recent years. The cultural attempts to remember
events that seem to defy representation or comprehension have been a
matter of particular scrutiny. In this light, memory studies has raised
the following questions. In what ways is mourning (or melancholia) a
response to memories that cannot be captured or explained or worked
through? In what ways is mourning a part of remembering? How does the
representation of memory function as mourning? In what ways is the
representation of memory the residue of what cannot be mourned or what
cannot even be remembered? While hoping to maintain the diversity of
memories studied and the varied approach to them, this conference will
seek to provide a focus for interdisciplinary memory studies in terms of
mourning on a North American cultural scene, the significance of what is
mourned there and how it is mourned. From the inception of mourning as
part of the cultural fabric of the nation in the face of its
foundational, genocidal events, to the current obsession with memory in
a supposedly amnesiac culture, we believe this American focus will
suggest a rich resource for conference papers.
Date received: November 23, 2000, revised October 14, 2004
© 2008 Atlas Conferences Inc.