Media, Cultural Memory and Hauntology
A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2026 | Viewed by 111
Special Issue Editors
Interests: Gothic and horror on screen; new media; pedagogy
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue will explore the ways in which media artefacts (film, television, literature, music, etc.) are ‘haunted’ by spectres of prior events and artistic manifestations. As William Faulkner wrote in Requiem for a Nun, ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past’. We wish to consider this statement in relation to an array of media forms.
We call upon authors to raise questions specific to the analysis of cultural memory and cultural hauntings, to consider the ways in which art and media are tethered to the past, and to consider, as Mark Fisher noted, the ‘failure of the future’ and the ‘compulsion to repeat’.
Possible questions to be addressed include the following:
- How far do contemporary ‘media’ texts discuss/represent a ‘failure of the future’ and cultural stasis?
- How does the philosophical concept of hauntology provide a framework for analysis of the contemporary media landscape?
- How are contemporary media artefacts representing and/or reconstructing recent cultural history?
- In controlling representations of the past, do contemporary texts construct an idealised or doomed future rooted in the past?
- Does the ‘compulsion to repeat’ problematise notions of originality?
Scholars and practitioners of all forms of media are invited to submit proposals for this Special Issue. Theoretical, empirical, and practice-based are all welcome.
Dr. Keith McDonald
Prof. Dr. Robert Edgar
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- cultural memory
- hauntology
- spectrality
- nostalgia
- simulacrum
- trauma
- revisionism
- postmodernism
- habitus
- identity and place
- canon formation
- retrofuturism
- memoir
- retro-revivals
- reboots and remakes
- documentary
- the biopic
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