Pyxis Call for Submissions: “Memory”

Claire Seoin Choi ’13 is calling all writers and artists:

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” — Marcel Proust

What does it mean to remember, or to forget? In his chef d’oeuvre In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust questions how one remembers and accesses memory. Proust, however, is not alone in this exploration. Many other scholars have delved into the topic of memory and investigated its importance in social organization, historical construction, and personal and group narratives. This semester, Pyxis invites you to contribute your academic work on this theme. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

How do we express memory in literature, in visual form, in performance? How do the stories we tell ourselves–through narratives, myths, or collective memories–structure the world around us? How is memory constructed, recorded, represented, manipulated?

What role do archives, libraries, museums, and heritage — both tangible (monuments, architecture, artifacts) and intangible (music, oral traditions) — play in forming or preserving memory? How does memory operate with regard to temporal and geographic shifts–in the case of migration or diasporic communities, for instance? How does memory emerge as something collective, historical, or institutional? How has technology affected the experience of memory? In what ways do we use memory — to construct identities (whether cultural, racial, or religious), justify a past, present, or future, or recover from trauma? Conversely, what is the function of forgetting? Are certain episodes of our individual or collective histories better left forgotten, and does human existence in some way necessitate forgetting? Finally, how do we verify the authenticity or ‘truth’ of our memories?

We encourage submissions from all disciplines in the humanities. Please submit your work to hello(at)pyxisjournal(dot)com. Your file should be named as “paper title_course number.” If you have an accompanying paper prompt, please feel free to include it. We accept papers of all lengths. The submission deadline is Sunday, February 24th.

We are also looking for artwork related to the theme. We accept multiple submissions. If your submission is selected, we will request a high resolution picture (at least 300 dpi) of your work.

The Fall 2012 issue, “Bodies,” and the Spring 2013 issue, “Memory,” will be printed by the end of spring semester.

Deadline February 24th, 2013
Contact: hello(at)pyxisjournal(dot)com