TRACES | Call for papers

TRACES Call for papers

TRACES JOURNAL | year 02 – 2017/2018
Europe and Heritages in/from the margins |Call for papers

A buffer, a liminal landscape, a ribbon, a palimpsest, a spatial zone are some of the expressions used by authors to address the concept of the margin in terms of both symbolic and spatial meanings. The concept of margin is very connected to the idea brought forward by Homi Bhabha of a “hybrid third space”, that is a way of describing a productive and reflective space that engenders new possibilities. It is an “interruptive, interrogative, and enunciative” space of new forms of cultural meaning and production, blurring the limitations of existing boundaries and calling into question established categorisations of culture and identity (Bhabha 1994).
The heightened profile and nature of different treatments of the European borders after the Schengen Agreement, the Refugee Crisis and EU countries’ different responses to it, the mobilisation of exclusionary European identities, are subjects that need an important reflection. Europe today can only be understood when seen from its social, cultural or geographic margins, thus encouraging European identity processes in which multiple and sometimes conflicting perspectives coexist, rather than being set against each other. The established interrelation between heritage, identity and history—the memory-identity-heritage complex theorised by Sharon Macdonald (2013)—is today no longer univocal: augmented mobility and migration flows combined with the acceleration of communication technology development are enhancing a social condition characterised by multi-transculturality and multi-ethnicity, and generally multi-perspectivity.
TRACES invites scholars, researchers, artists, educators, with the widest range of backgrounds, specialisation, and perspectives, to submit innovative and critical reflections on the theme of “Europe, Heritages in/from the margins”, investigating how in and from the margins—in their multipronged meaning—we can support the development of a more reflexive idea of Europe (Römhild 2009). We look for contributions exploring innovative heritages practices drawing on an open, processual and flexible understanding of European identity and heritage, strengthening democracy, fostering negotiation and facilitating ways of dealing with conflict. We seek to explore how heritages in/from the margins—be them cultural, social, economic, religious, physical, visible or invisible, real or imagined, locational or relational—could contribute to European integration and cultural cohesion, nurturing a reflexive Europeanisation as a bedrock for a democratic and enlightened public imagination of European identity.
A multi-disciplinary scientific committee will select contributions to be published in the printed and digital, open-access versions of the magazine, each with a ISSN code.

 
Deadline for submissions are:
September 01, 2017 (visual essays)
December 01, 2017 (interviews, dialogues and single/ multiple authors papers)
April 01, 2018 (short and full papers)

 
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
The contributions, all in British English, should be emailed as attached documents to infoTRACES@polimi.it, where other inquires may also be addressed.

 
Visual essays
Short texts (max 10000 types including spaces and essential references) with 8-12 images.
Visual essays are meant to communicate speculative researches and practice-based visual investigations, building up a narration by using both visual and verbal language. Images, photographs, drawings, sketches and diagrams play a key role in presenting the intellectual inquiry enunciated in the paper. The main text could be integrated by short sentences directly linked to the images and working as a graphical superstructure.

 
Dialogues
Interviews (6000-18000 types including spaces and essential references, with 3 images, if possible).
Short and Full papers
Short papers (max 6000 types including spaces and essential references, with 4-6 images) and full papers (max 22500 types, with 9-11 images).

 
Each contribution must include:
• title (without name of the author/s);
• body of the paper;
• numbered footnotes;
• bibliographical references;
• image captions (sent in a separate file) supplied with the paper. Image captions must contain the same letters/numbering used for the corresponding files and credits (i.e. name of the photographer).
• short bio—max 50 words—of the author/s (sent in a separate file) including full name, affiliation, and contacts.

 
Please, use a Chicago B (author, data) reference system.
All the images must be saved as separate file in .jpg format (300 dpi).

For further information and submission guidelines, please visit:

TRACES website: http://www.traces.polimi.it/

Call for papers: http://www.traces.polimi.it/2017/07/28/call-for-papers-year-02/

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