The submission system is now closed. We will send out acceptance letters in early 2020. Please note that all presenters are required to become members of the MSA. 

If you have any questions, contact us via conference@memorystudiesassociation.org.

Call for Papers

The Memory Studies Association aims to provide the central forum for scholars and practitioners in the growing field of memory studies.  Our annual meeting thus includes contributions from all disciplines and practices in the field understood broadly and welcomes participants from every corner of the world.  

The 2020 Annual Meeting of the Memory Studies Association will take place from June 18-21 in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Though long important in U.S. history, Charlottesville became more widely known in August, 2017 when white nationalists staged a rally to protest the city council's decision to move a monument of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from the center of the city to a more peripheral location. The protest devolved into a melee resulting in three deaths, and frightening images quickly spread around the world.  Since then, Charlottesville has come to stand for conflict over the unworked-through legacies of the American past, and as a flashpoint in debates about racial justice, populism, and commemoration. In addition to its relevance for the unworked-through legacies of the American past specifically, Charlottesville has entered transnational discussions about the legacies of slavery, segregation, and antisemitism more broadly. The 2020 meeting of the Memory Studies Association will therefore highlight questions about the role of public memory in democratic societies and in the struggle for racial justice through a series of related keynote addresses, plenary sessions, roundtables, and artistic interventions. We will be cooperating closely with local activists and the Monticello historical site (the home of President Thomas Jefferson) to critically interrogate local, national, and transnational memories.

We welcome submissions of proposals for individual papers, panels, roundtables, workshops, and other events on any of the issues raised above, as well as on any topic in the realm of memory studies. As always, the conference will seek to be a venue for the presentation of the entire breadth of what the field has to offer.