You little beauty!
This conference invites papers on the theme of memory and forgetting. Memory is malleable. It is
shaped by selection, by mediation, by transmission, by ideologies, by societies and, above all, by
forgetting. In the words of Ann Rigney, ‘like water transported in a leaky bucket which slowly runs
dry, [memories] are continuously being lost along the way’. And yet, the archive contains a
multiplicity of memories that have survived their journeys, that have been remade in their
transmission, and continue to be remade as historians select those memories that speak to particular
perspectives or narratives. What can we say about this selective approach to the archive? An approach
that often masquerades as ʹmemoryʹ ‐ in terms of presenting a distinct narrative ‐ and ʹforgettingʹ ‐ in
terms of omission, whether deliberate or through ignorance or inattention. This conference examines
the process of how early medieval societies created their pasts and, in turn, how those pasts have
continued to be created in subsequent centuries.
This conference calls for papers that recall this theme, or, in the spirit of the theme, that do not.
Topics might include:
Agendas and identities
Biography and autobiography
Individual and cultural memory
Oral and textual histories
Transmission and reimaginings
Education and memoria
Transnational and global memory
Memory of conflict – forgetting of peace
Submissions may be in the form of individual papers of 20 minutes duration, themed panels of three 20‐minute papers, or Round Tables of up to six shorter papers (total of one hour). All sessions will
include time for questions and general discussion.
Please send proposals (150–200 words per paper), along with author’s name, paper/panel/RT title, and
academic affiliation (if any) to AEMA by 30 August 2022.
Australian Early Medieval Association Gazette 