Memory, Ecology, and Sustainability
The Second Annual International Conference of the Indian Network for Memory Studies (INMS) in association with the Centre for Memory Studies (CMS) at IIT Madras
20-22 September 2023
Faculty Coordinators: Avishek Parui and Merin Simi Raj, Associate Professors, IIT Madras, Faculty Investigators CMS, Founding Chairpersons, INMS.
This hybrid conference seeks to explore the intersections of memory, ecology, and sustainability by examining these issues as ontological, experiential, and cultural categories, while also highlighting how these operate as entanglements. Drawing on Andrew Hoskins’ notion of ecology of memory and Astrid Erll’s study of implicit collective memory while also situating the same as emergent as well as connective conditions, this conference welcomes interventions from scholars, independent researchers, and practitioners about how memory and ecology shape each other in complex ways. It attempts to historicize the various notions of ecology (natural, affective, discursive, technological, digital) and map the same on to the changing experiences of memory apropos of affect, materiality, and intercorporeality. In doing so, the conference aims to connect rituals of remembering and experiencing the environment to systems of sustainability, which assume material, cultural, as well as planetary proportions through big events as well as through slow processes of change. The theoretical scope and research range of this conference are unique as well as inclusive and the philosophy invested here aims to connect concepts such as memory and materiality with event, ecology, and sustainability in ways which can potentially shape academic research, technological innovations, as well as policy formations.
The committee invites abstracts of 250 words (along with a separate bio-note of 100 words) on topics including (but not limited to) the following:
- Literary studies, memory studies, and ecocriticism
- Culture, commemoration, and restoration
- Event, encoding, and evolution
- Remembrance, media, and affectivity
- Identity, security, and sustainability
- Affect, oblivion, and materiality
- Collective memory, cognition, and ecology
- Sustainability, technology, and policy
- Narratives, schema, and liminality
- Digital ecology, representation, and reconstruction
- Empathy, environment, and intercorporeality
The conference will be organised in hybrid mode, with both in-person and virtual presentations.
Important dates for the conference
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 05 April 2023
Notification of acceptance: 05 May 2023
Deadline for registration: 31 May 2023
Notification of registration: 10 June 2023
Conference dates: 20-22 September 2023
Send your abstracts and enquiries to memoryecologysustainability@gmail.com
Conference email: memoryecologysustainability@gmail.com
Dr Avishek Parui
Principal Investigator, Centre for Memory Studies
Founding Chairperson, Indian Network for Memory Studies
Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
avishekparui@iitm.ac.in
Dr Merin Simi Raj
Co-principal Investigator, Centre for Memory Studies
Founding Chairperson, Indian Network for Memory Studies
Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
merin@iitm.ac.in