Crafting Memory: Where Writers [don’t] Meet Readers

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

Memory is fundamental to writing and reading. Following Viktor Sklovsky, though, the artistic text functions by "deautomatizing" perception of the described object, that is, by foiling memory of the thing as known outside the text, "making it strange." This panel addresses texts that as part of their artistic project go beyond "deautomatizing" to employ strategies that foreground the very process of remembering and/or unremembering, frustrating some readers, while delighting others.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 20th Century

Chair

• Alexandar Mihailovic, Hofstra U

Papers

• Marina Tsvetaeva on Recollection - Olga Peters Hasty, Princeton U

• Struggling to Narrate: Memoir vs. Memory of the Stalin Era - Carol J. Any, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)

• Dementia as a Narrative Strategy: An Oxymoron? - Diane M. Nemec Ignashev, Carleton College

Discussant

• Alexandra Smith, U of Edinburgh (UK)