Center for Intercultural Dialogue

CALL FOR ARTICLES

Catalan Journal of Communication and Cultural Studies – Special Issue 8.1 (Spring 2016)
*Special Issue: ‘The Spanish Civil War 80 years on: discourse, memory and the media’*
Guest Editors:  Ruth Sanz Sabido (Canterbury Christ Church University), Stuart Price (De Montfort University) and Laia Quílez Esteve (Rovira i Virgili University)
Deadline for contributions: *15 October, 2015*

The Catalan Journal of Communication and Cultural Studies invites submissions for a 2016 Special Issue that will mark the eightieth anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, by presenting a collection of papers that represent the latest perspectives on the
cultural, historical, regional, political, and social aspects of the Civil War and its legacy.

If it is true that ‘history is written by the victors’, the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War provides a textbook example of this tendency: the victorious Nationalists spent the following thirty-six years (1939-1975) trying to eliminate any remaining vestiges of those who had fought against them. For the losers, this meant in effect both a constant purge
of any dissenting ideologies, and the physical persecution of anyone who was suspected of sympathising with the Republican cause. Furthermore, the ‘pact of silence’ that was agreed during the transition to democracy meant that the problems caused by the Civil War and the dictatorship remained unresolved long after Franco’s death, maintaining deep-rooted
divisions in contemporary Spain.

It was only approximately thirty years after Franco’s death that the recovery of memory was promoted through social, political, and cultural means, so that the unheard voices of the past began to gain attention. However, this remains a highly contentious area, since the old struggles often re-emerge in contemporary political and socio-economic issues within the country. The Law of Historical Memory provides guidelines on several issues related to memory, from the exhumation of mass graves to the alteration of street names to eliminate references to agents of the dictatorship. However, the limited extent and application of this Law by the Government has led to the further polarisation of political perspectives (while thousands of families are still looking for the graves of their relatives).

This Special Issue considers Memory as yet another site of struggle, a contemporary re-enactment of the old divisions that are very much part of the country’s identity and which still permeate social, political and cultural life in contemporary Spain. The collection of articles will acknowledge the reproduction of these tensions, but will also offer a clear-sighted account of the conflict, grounded in a variety of historical and political discourses, oral testimonies, and analyses of media outputs.

Among other aspects, this issue is concerned with the ways in which children and grandchildren of victims and survivors of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship relate to the memory of the repression, and to the development of the democratic transition. The examination of these issues from the perspective of generational memory involves several considerations, including the socialization of memory, the institutionalization and revision of the past, the connections between popular culture, media practices and representations, and the uses of memory through time in relation to the changes in the policies of remembrance.

We invite contributions from scholars, researchers and practitioners from around the world to submit full articles on topics that may include, but are not limited to, the following:
– Media representations of trauma and violence in the Civil War, Franco’s repression, the final years of the dictatorship and the transition
– The significance of the conflict in contemporary Spain
– Memory and the Civil War
– Postmemory and Civil War, Francoism and the Transition
– Collective identities (national and regional)
– The work of Memory Associations in Spain
– Women in the Civil War and beyond
– The struggle of anarchists and libertarian communists
– Constructions of ‘national’ (Spanish) memories and their national and regional significance
– Social perceptions of the Civil War, the dictatorship and the transition
– Using the past to look into the future

The journal plans to include articles between *6000 and 7000 words*, as well as brief research notes and reports of around *3000 words* for the Viewpoint section. Full articles for proposed contributions should be sent to catalan.journal@urv.cat by *15 October 2015*. All contributions will be subjected to double blind peer review. And please follow the guidelines for authors.