{"id":482,"date":"2026-09-03T15:36:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T19:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/?page_id=482"},"modified":"2026-09-04T14:37:47","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T18:37:47","slug":"call-for-papers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/futures-of-memory-conference-2027\/call-for-papers\/","title":{"rendered":"Call For Papers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><u>Futures of Memory Conference 2027<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Performing the Past, Witnessing (for) the Future: Memory in the Posthumanist Era<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The early 21<sup>st<\/sup>-century understanding of memory as fundamentally \u2018performed\u2019 was predicated on the role of the body, or embodiment per se. Other theorists in this period analyzed the mediation of memory via objects\u2014generally non-human objects or bodies, but also potentially including the human body. A theory of memory as performance or performativity foregrounds the <em>process<\/em> (representation, mediation; remembering, recollection) over the <em>product<\/em> (a specific memory), while also disrupting the longstanding conception of memory as virtual space or place of storage (archive). Memory as <em>performance<\/em> challenges such entrenched (and static) concepts, rendering memory a dynamic, organic, ever-unfolding force of perpetual (human) becoming. Yet, as humans, we are increasingly running up against our limitations as a species that has managed to generate, through remarkable intellectual capacity coupled with an extraordinary lack of foresight, a convergence of \u2018natural\u2019 and technological forces whose combined threat to humanity has no historical precedent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What becomes of memory beyond the limitations of the human? What if the \u2018body\u2019 in question\u2014not merely the object but the subject of memory\u2014is that of the earth and its ecosystems, the \u2018natural\u2019 environment that is also the matrix of all life forms? Such a radically externalized, materialized and utterly non-virtual understanding of memory offers a radical challenge to psychological or psychoanalytic\u2014and therefore anthropomorphic\u2014theories of memory.&nbsp; Alternatively, what if the \u2018body\u2019 in question (the object and\/or subject of memory) is a wholly artificial being\u2014such as an embodied AI\u2014created by humans in ironic fulfillment of Mary Shelley\u2019s <em>Frankenstein<\/em>\u2019s dark forecast? (A fictional construct, Shelley\u2019s creature has proven to be a remarkably prescient and adaptable allegory for the problems faced by humans in the second decade of the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century.) At what point is generative AI\u2019s anthropomorphic interface (\u2018natural language\u2019) trumped by its underlying large-language model operativity? In other words, what does memory mean for a radically non-human AI agent? How much more (or less) alien or non-human is this form of technologically based memory-in-action? How much more (or less) \u2018authentic\u2019 is it?&nbsp; How do we even understand authenticity in this context? Where it was once possible to believe that what was \u2018human\u2019 or \u2018natural\u2019 was authentic and real, whereas anything technology was artificial, fake, or inauthentic, this position has for some time now been untenable, not least since the astonishingly recent advent of generative AI. Since 2023 at least it has been apparent that what AI does first and foremost is to throw the question of the \u2018human\u2019 back in \u2018our\u2019 faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The conjunction here of environmental concerns, ultimately the climate crisis, on the one hand, and the emergent threat of AI-induced techno-social breakdown, on the other, is deliberate, given their real-world convergence, and given that both are human created, anthropogenic; both coincide in the Anthropocene as the epoch\u2014and the apotheosis\u2014of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. In this perspective, memory after the human means after the de-centering of the human, after the deconstruction of human exceptionalism, and after humans have ceased re-fashioning the world in their own image. This double re-contextualization of memory as \u2018performance\u2019 embodied within natural-ecological and\/or technological spaces, structures, and systems, or their hybridized progeny, extends the consideration of memory in the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century into the timeframe of the Anthropocene and beyond, to the projected transformation of the object-world into a brave new world of radically non-human subject-agents. Rather than undermining the understanding of memory as performance in the present tense, this re-contextualization reframes it in critically posthumanist terms. Whether the example is the Holocaust or a projected post-apocalyptic future: in what sense is memory \u2018performed\u2019 when the bodies that experienced an event are no more? What does it mean to bear witness to the past in the present? And how can we turn the clarity of hindsight into the foresight that could become a witnessing for the future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The conference organizers invite proposal for 15\u201320-minute papers on relevant topics and questions, including (but not limited to):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Memory and the radically and meaningfully non- or more-than- or other-than-human<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Imagination and memory in the age of AI<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Queer perspectives and approaches to memory in the Anthropocene<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Indigenous knowledges and the environment: memory as land-based practice<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Indigenous knowledges and futurity: \u2018blood memory\u2019<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Decolonization: witnessing past violence<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mediating witnessing for the future<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Performing Holocaust memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Performance and performativity: agency, self-awareness, authenticity<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u2018Unconscious\u2019 memory: affect, emotion, embodiment<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Can authenticity be separated from embodiment?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mediating authenticity<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>From biopolitics to necropolitics: memorializing the posthumous body<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Posthumanist cinema and\/or literature and memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Premediation as memory of the future<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Performing commemorative landscapes<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Les lieux de m\u00e9moires<\/em>: memory as place or space<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Les milieux de m\u00e9moires<\/em>: memory as community<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Performing trauma in the Anthropocene<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Transgenerational trauma in the Anthropocene<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Memory and trauma as mediated in\/through culture<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Climate witnessing and ecological grief<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Transcultural Holocaust memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The African Diaspora and transcultural memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Feminism and transcultural memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Neurodiversity and transcultural memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Animal studies and transcultural memory<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What do rocks remember?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Please submit a title and abstract (max 500 words) and a short bio (max 250 words) to Russell Kilbourn (rkilbourn@wlu.ca) and Stephanie Lewis (lewi2580@mylaurier.ca) by <strong>December 15, 2026<\/strong>. Results will be conveyed by mid-January 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The organizers wish to thank Laurier\u2019s Research Office, the Department of English and Film Studies, and the Dean of Arts office, for their generous support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Description of Event:&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2018Performing the Past, Witnessing (for) the Future: Memory in the Posthumanist Era\u2019 is a 3-day conference <strong>happening May 03-05, 2027<\/strong>. This event is co-sponsored by the \u2018Human Futures Now\u2019 Faculty\u00a0Research Centre (subject to approval), under the auspices of Laurier\u2019s Research Office, and with the generous support of Laurier\u2019s Department of English and Film Studies, and the Dean of Arts office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The<strong> in-person only<\/strong> conference, to be held at downtown Waterloo\u2019s Balsillie School of International Affairs, will bring together local and international scholars and practitioners to reflect, in a critical posthumanist context, on the turn in memory studies from textual and archive-based models of collecting and preserving fixed images and narratives to more recent models of embodiment, re-enactment, re-invention, performance, transmission, and education. The conference (and attendant film screening and other events) will be an opportunity for the critical exploration of individual and collective memory and historical witnessing as modes of performative and creative production, of agential\u00a0self-fashioning, as specific events (e.g. the Holocaust) fade from lived memory, and the future\u2019s horizon foreshortens, even as other issues (e.g. the climate crisis; the refugee crisis; the AI crisis) unfold in a digitally mediated present-tense \u2018real-time.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The conference will be structured around four keynote presentations, one each from the fields of memory studies and critical posthumanism, plus two creative presentation (filmmaker and other).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Waterloo, Ontario is in the heart of southern Ontario\u2019s \u2018Green Belt\u2019; one-hour by car (1.5 by train or bus) from Toronto and Pearson airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For more information see the Futures of Memory website: <a href=\"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/\">https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Futures of Memory Conference 2027 Performing the Past, Witnessing (for) the Future: Memory in the Posthumanist Era The early 21st-century understanding of memory as fundamentally \u2018performed\u2019 was predicated on the role of the body, or embodiment per se. Other theorists in this period analyzed the mediation of memory via objects\u2014generally non-human objects or bodies, but &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/futures-of-memory-conference-2027\/call-for-papers\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Call For Papers&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"parent":477,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-482","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/482\/revisions\/492"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/specialprojects.wlu.ca\/futures-of-memory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}