Handbook on Memory Studies in Africa (Brill) -- Call for Submissions

The Handbook on Memory Studies in Africa seeks to provide a guide to the expanding field of memory studies in and on Africa. This edited collection will bring together cutting-edge scholarship to map the continent’s multitudinous memory terrains, diverse cultural histories, and heterogeneous memory regimes and actors. Recognizing that memory studies on the continent have vastly expanded over the last decade, this handbook will offer readers an introduction to key concepts, debates, themes, and trends in memory studies in and on Africa. To this end, we invite contributions from early career and established scholars working in memory studies, African studies, and related disciplines. Contributions exploring memory dynamics within Africa as well as African memory processes in the wider world are particularly welcome. We seek to assemble chapters that provide synthesis, overview, and bird’s-eye-perspectives (as opposed to single case studies and microhistories). Although this handbook will be published in English, we encourage scholars to submit projects dealing with any language spoken on the continent. Themes and topics may include:

• Memory and epistemology

• Memory and gender

• Memory and power

• Memory and ecology

• Memory and diasporas

• Memory and materiality

• Memory and restorative justice

• Memory and democracy

• Memory and digital technologies

• Memory and religion

• Memories of precolonial times, slavery, colonialism, war, liberation, social movements,

genocide, and authoritarianism

• Comparative African memory studies

• Transnational and global memories in Africa

Abstracts should be submitted to https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/4886/submitter by March 20, 2023. Selected contributors will be invited in May to submit a first draft of their essay (8000-10,000 words, references and notes included) by the end of 2023 followed by a blind peer review process. We expect this Handbook to be published towards the end of 2025.