The ENRS has organised the Genealogies of Memory project since 2011. Its eleventh 2021 edition will be held as part of the Memory Studies Association (MSA) annual conference. After Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Madrid, the MSA conference will this time take place in Warsaw on 5–9 July 2021. During the event, the Genealogies of Memory will become a stream, i.e. panels and roundtable discussions are going to take place during the whole conference. Its primary focus will be the topic of European memory.

The Genealogies of Memory stream titled ‘European Remembrance and Solidarity’ will be divided into three parts:

1. European memory

The formations of European memory, and contestations thereof, have taken place both at the institutional level of the EU and Member States’ policies and that of non-state socio-cultural agencies. Intellectual reflection on European memory has evolved as much around consensus as well as conflictual or polyphonic historical narratives. We invite reflection on the state of European remembering today through, but not limited to, the following questions: What does the term European memory mean? Is it an umbrella term for a wide range of diverse narratives or rather a selective memory project based on certain values? Is this term accepted, negotiated or resisted in local memory? What are the master narratives of European history and memory, and how have they evolved over time? What have been the fields of consensus and fields of contests within these? How do the narratives differ depending on the various agents behind them? How do the narratives differ depending on the various genres and media of memory employed?

2. European studies as memory studies

Europe presents a special field within memory studies, connecting the concepts of policies and politics of memory with conceptual history, memory ethics, memory and education, but also with the socio-cultural questions of grass-roots active remembering. It includes the vital questions of mnemonic agency within complex multiscale environments: the relations between local, national, regional and transnational levels. The very notions of ‘transnational memory’ and variations of ‘travelling’ memories (A. Erll) are integral to the idea of Europeanisation as well, while ‘national memory’ has been formed anew in reference to ‘European memory’. Within this thematic bloc, we invite presentations discussing the conceptual genealogies of memory studies related to the idea of European history, memory and identity, as well as other theoretically-methodological questions concerning European memory.

3. Central and Eastern Europe: regional European memories

The European integration perspective frames the post-communist history of Central and Eastern Europe as the history of EU accession. What is the role of societies of the CEE region within European remembrance, and what is the role of European remembrance in conceptualising CEE as a region? What constitutes regional memories and how do they relate to (contest and fuel) national and European memory projects? When it comes to research, does the region of CEE require any special theoretical concepts and methodologies different from Europe as a whole? Last but not least, what may be the use of applying the CEE local research traditions to broader memory studies?

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Funding: The ENRS intends to cover the MSA conference fee for the accepted participants of the Genealogies of Memory stream. Participants of the stream will have equal access to all MSA conference activities.

Registration: Abstracts and shorts bios must be submitted to the system announced on the MSA website. The registration for the conference will be open starting from 1 September 2020 until 30 October 2020.

COVID disclosure: Please note that the Genealogies of Memory stream is planned to be an onsite event in Warsaw. MSA closely monitors the COVID-19 situation and will consider shifting to online-only events, if necessary.

Read the whole Call for Papers for the MSA 2021 conference

More about the MSA

More about the Genealogies of Memory project

Should you have any questions concerning the Genealogies of Memory stream, please contact us at genealogies@enrs.eu.

Read the full conference programme