Submission Deadline: April 1, 2017
This special issue seeks to explore approaches to study of history, memory and public space from various perspectives,interpretations and media. Recent engagement with the complex nature of heritage has focused on public places as repositories of memories and sites of heritage and historical experiences. Focussing on memorials, public squares, museums, temples, pilgrimage and heritage sites, such engagements have asked what these spaces mean to those who shape them, those who live there and those who visit them.
Public spaces, as we know are also structured by social, political and cultural transitions as also by diverse forms of cultural heritage. The creation of public space is often entwined with ideas of local identity and belonging. This issue will explore the ways in which the monumentalization of public spaces by the agencies of state are perceived. This issue will also explore if there are non-monumental forms of memorialization and the ways of understanding them in the context of public spaces. The following questions are central to the relationships we wish to explore: How do we understand the discourses around remembering and forgetting within heritage spaces? In what ways do migrant cultures invest public spaces with new cultural meanings? In an increasingly globalized world, how is historical memory reconfigured within new spaces? Do public spaces play a role in reshaping memory along with historical understanding? In what ways are digital technologies altering the ways in which historically significant sites are perceived? Are such technologies changing the nature of our interactions with heritage sites? Contributors are free to explore any aspect of these questions in their chosen mode of intervention.
