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Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity
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Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity

A special issue of Literature (ISSN 2410-9789).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 5909

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Irene Mizrahi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Boston College, Newton, MA 02467, USA
Interests: trauma studies; monologic versus polyphonic; dialogic constructions of memory
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Claire Sorin

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Laboratoire d'Études et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone, Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France
Interests: US women's history
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that submissions are open for the upcoming Special Issue Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity. The Guest Editors Irene Mizrahi (Boston College) and Claire Sorin (Aix Marseille University, LERMA, Aix-en-Provence) welcome humanities, especially literature, and art articles focusing on how memory and trauma studies have reshaped and been reshaped by women’s and feminist history, art, and literature since the 1990s. Countless research topics fit within the scope of this Special Issue, such as critical overviews of the recent scholarship examining the interactions between memory, trauma, and women’s studies—with a special focus on art and literature; papers examining the relationship between individual and collective gendered memory; the cultural, social, and political valances of portrayals of traumatic experiences produced by women; the dynamic interplay between past and present in local, national, and transnational contexts, and in processes of reparation, reconciliation, or inspiration; debates concerning public places, monuments, and statues as representations of women’s or feminist collective memory; the uses of both implicit and explicit memory in works of art and literature; the dynamics of remembering and forgetting and how this dynamic informs issues of power and hegemony; monologic versus polyphonic and dialogic constructions of memory and the importance of distinguishing between them; new media and its challenges for individual and collective memory. This Special Issue welcomes English-language articles considering a variety of transnational contexts. 

Aims

Literature (ISSN 2410-9789) accepts papers on the literature of all times and places. All kinds of approaches are encouraged, including the perspective of the literature classroom, the hospital, the prison, the therapist’s office, etc. We will consider relationships between high and low “literature” and other forms of the story in multimedia, social media, and even video games. We are willing to publish more illustrations than other periodicals. However, our focus is on literature per se, relegating theory, other topics, other media, and other disciplines to supporting roles.

Scope

  • Literature and cultural studies
  • Contemporary literature
  • Women's literature and gender studies

Original research articles and reviews are welcome. Submissions will be peer reviewed and published following “The MDPI Editorial Process”. Guest Editors will conduct the editorial process via the MDPI online Submission System (SuSy), and will accept or reject submissions, ask the authors for revision, or ask for an additional reviewer to read the paper after the peer-review process. 

We look forward to receiving your contributions. 

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Histories.

Dr. Irene Mizrahi
Dr. Claire Sorin
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. Literature is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly 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 1000 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

  • trauma studies
  • feminism
  • gendered individual/collective memory
  • processes of repara-tion/reconciliation/inspiration

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

34 pages, 329 KiB  
Article
The Mater Dolorosa: Spanish Diva Lola Flores as Spokesperson for Francoist Oppressive Ideology
by Irene Mizrahi
Literature 2025, 5(2), 8; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5020008 - 11 Apr 2025
Viewed by 278
Abstract
This article critically examines the star persona of Lola Flores, an iconic Spanish flamenco artist, within the historical and political context of Francoist Spain (1939–1975). It argues that Flores’s carefully constructed star image not only persisted into post-Franco Spain but also served as [...] Read more.
This article critically examines the star persona of Lola Flores, an iconic Spanish flamenco artist, within the historical and political context of Francoist Spain (1939–1975). It argues that Flores’s carefully constructed star image not only persisted into post-Franco Spain but also served as a covert vehicle for the continued propagation of National-Falangist Catholic ideology. The article primarily focuses on two major productions: the book Lola en carne viva. Memorias de Lola Flores (1990) and the television series El coraje de vivir (1994). Both portray a linear and cohesive version of her life from childhood to her later years, carefully curated to defend and rehabilitate her image. While many view Flores as a self-made artist, the article argues that her star persona was a deliberate construct—shaped by Suevia Films, a major Francoist-era film studio, and media narratives that aligned her with traditional gender roles, Catholic values, and Spanish nationalism. Despite emerging in post-Franco Spain, Flores’s narrative does not mark a rupture from the ideological frameworks of the past. Instead, it repackages Francoist values—particularly those surrounding patriarchal gender norms, suffering, and the glorification of sacrifice—to ensure her continued relevance. Suevia Films (1951) played a significant role in shaping her star persona as a symbol of Spanish folklore, aligning her with Francoist ideals of nation, Catholic morality, and submissive femininity. Her image was used to promote Spain internationally as a welcoming and culturally rich destination. Her persona fit within Franco’s broader strategy of using flamenco and folklore to attract foreign tourism while maintaining tight ideological control over entertainment. Flores’s life is framed as a rags-to-riches story, which reinforces Social Spencerist ideology (a social Darwinist perspective) that hard work and endurance lead to success, rather than acknowledging systemic oppression under Francoism. Her personal struggles—poverty, romantic disappointments, accusations of collaboration with the Franco regime, and tax evasion—are framed as necessary trials that strengthen her character. This aligns with the Catholic ideal of redemptive suffering, reinforcing her status as the mater dolorosa (Sorrowful Mother) figure. This article highlights the contradictions in Flores’s gender performance—while she embodied passion and sensuality in flamenco, her offstage identity conformed to the submissive, self-sacrificing woman idealized by the Francoist Sección Femenina (SF). Even in her personal life, Flores’s narrative aligns with Francoist values—her father’s bar, La Fe de Pedro Flores, symbolizes the fusion of religion, nationalism, and traditional masculinity. Tico Medina plays a key role by framing Lola en carne viva as an “authentic” and unfiltered account. His portrayal is highly constructed, acting as her “defense lawyer” to counter criticisms. Flores’s autobiography is monologic—it suppresses alternative perspectives, ensuring that her version of events remains dominant and unquestioned. Rather than acknowledging structural oppression, the narrative glorifies suffering as a path to resilience, aligning with both Catholic doctrine and Francoist propaganda. The article ultimately deconstructs Lola Flores’s autobiographical myth, demonstrating that her public persona—both onstage and offstage—was a strategic construction that perpetuated Francoist ideals well beyond the dictatorship. While her image has been celebrated as a symbol of Spanish cultural identity, it also functioned as a tool for maintaining patriarchal and nationalist ideologies under the guise of entertainment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity)
13 pages, 192 KiB  
Article
A Mother’s Revenge: Gendered Mourning, Voicelessness, and the Passing Down of Memory in Cynthia Ozick’s Short Story “What Happened to the Baby” (2006)
by Myriam Marie Ackermann-Sommer
Literature 2025, 5(1), 3; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature5010003 - 31 Jan 2025
Viewed by 683
Abstract
This article focuses on a little-studied short story from Jewish American writer Cynthia Ozick, “What Happened to the Baby?” It explores the narrative elaboration of a distinctly feminine trauma—that of a mother in mourning whose grief is not acknowledged in a patriarchal context. [...] Read more.
This article focuses on a little-studied short story from Jewish American writer Cynthia Ozick, “What Happened to the Baby?” It explores the narrative elaboration of a distinctly feminine trauma—that of a mother in mourning whose grief is not acknowledged in a patriarchal context. My approach uses close readings and psychoanalytical insights to understand the female protagonist’s voiceless rage. The narrator of the framing narrative is a young woman trying to understand a mysterious family trauma—how little Henrietta, the daughter of her uncle Simon and his ex-wife, Essie, died. The starting point of the story is a distorted version of the accident, told to the narrator by her mother, Lily, and according to which it is Essie’s mistreatment that caused the little girl’s death. Through the narrative, the narrator encourages Essie to tell her own side of the story. In the embedded narrative, the mother reveals that it was in fact the father’s negligence that caused the death of their child. Father and mother subsequently develop differing models of mourning. Simon, a linguist, creates a whole new idiom enabling him to keep commemorating the dead child. In contrast, Essie, the mother, is determined to destroy any discourse that might account for her trauma, and to undermine the father’s very public mourning process. The narrator acts as a kind of therapist, allowing Essie’s discourse on loss to emerge after decades of repression. On the masculine/feminine, father/mother binary axis, I will observe, based on the study of this fascinating short story, that the father’s mourning involves mastering language, while the mother experiences loss through the sheer inability to speak up—at least until the narrator, Vivian, empowers her by giving her a voice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity)
13 pages, 257 KiB  
Article
Thwarting the Tyranny of Fathers: Women in Nicole Krauss’s Great House and the Creative Transmission of Traumatic Memory
by Sophie Vallas
Literature 2024, 4(4), 234-246; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4040017 - 5 Oct 2024
Viewed by 1097
Abstract
With Great House (2010), Nicole Krauss offers a choral novel that interweaves the lives of several characters loosely connected by a huge, wooden desk that one of them relentlessly chases around the world. A possible symbol of the memory of the Second World [...] Read more.
With Great House (2010), Nicole Krauss offers a choral novel that interweaves the lives of several characters loosely connected by a huge, wooden desk that one of them relentlessly chases around the world. A possible symbol of the memory of the Second World War Jewish genocide transmitted to younger generations, the desk powerfully materializes transmission in its potentially traumatic, obsessional, and violent dimensions. This essay deals with the way first- and second-generation women, in the novel, develop ingenious, creative but also uncompromising responses to the inescapable duty of remembrance. While the dominating male characters freeze memory in timeless, petrified representations, these female writers expose its terrible necessity while hiding nothing of the damages memory causes to witnesses and descendants. They claim a right of inventory and use the desk as an echo-chamber reflecting both the suffering voices of children and the dark presence of defaulting fathers and failing mothers, thus allowing for a new generation to be born with a more bearable heritage. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity)
13 pages, 247 KiB  
Article
Ruby Rich’s Dream Library: Feminist Memory-Keeping as an Archive of Affective Mnemonic Practices
by Sharon Crozier-De Rosa
Literature 2024, 4(2), 62-74; https://doi.org/10.3390/literature4020005 - 30 Apr 2024
Viewed by 2492
Abstract
In the so-called West, feminist activists and scholars have long been traumatised by the erasure of their histories via dominant patriarchal narratives, which has served as an impediment to the intergenerational transmission of feminist knowledge. Recently, while acknowledging the very real and ongoing [...] Read more.
In the so-called West, feminist activists and scholars have long been traumatised by the erasure of their histories via dominant patriarchal narratives, which has served as an impediment to the intergenerational transmission of feminist knowledge. Recently, while acknowledging the very real and ongoing impact of this historical omission, some feminists have issued a call to turn away from a narrative of women’s history as ‘serial forgetting’ and towards an acknowledgement of the affirmative capacity of feminist remembering. At the same time, memory theorist Ann Rigney has advocated for a ‘positive turn’ in memory studies, away from what she perceives to be the field’s gravitation towards trauma and instead towards an analysis of life’s positive legacies. In this article, I combine both approaches to investigate one feminist memory-keeper’s archive, analysing what it reveals about ‘the mechanisms by which positive attachments are transmitted across space and time’. Throughout her life, little-known ‘between-the-waves’ Australian feminist Ruby Rich (1888–1988) performed multiple intersecting activist activities. While she created feminist memories through her work for various political organisations, she also collected, stored and transmitted feminist memories through her campaign for a dedicated space for women’s collections in the National Library of Australia. Propelled by fear of loss and inspired by hope for remembering, Rich constructed a brand of archival activism that was both educational and emotional. In this paper, I examine the strategies Rich employed to try to realise her dream of effecting intellectual and affective bonds between future feminists and their predecessors. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Memory and Women’s Studies: Between Trauma and Positivity)
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