WPCC Special Issue: Call for Papers

Culture Wars: Statues, Flags, Streets and Squares

Issue Editor: Anthony McNicholas

Flags, emblems, monuments, street names, statues are some of the means by which nations and states promote themselves, both to their own citizens and to the world at large; the public face of our imagined communities. But as they seek to unify, such symbols have often been the occasion for contestation, disagreement, violence even. Empires, systems, regimes rise and fall. Societies change, and with such change comes a reassessment of societies’ symbolic life, as yesterday’s heroes become today’s villains, past triumphs a present embarrassment. The past is continually raked over, re-examined and reinterpreted, with each re-examination argued over. Examples abound from across the globe: the toppling of Rhodes’ statue in Cape Town in 2015; in Budapest, Soviet era leaders are gathered together in Memento Park. While Ukraine had by 2017 decreed the removal of all 1,320 statues of Lenin. And in Germany there are no monuments commemorating the military in the war years. In the USA, statues of Confederate leaders are being taken down; thwarted by a statute forbidding such removals, the mayor of Birmingham Alabama had one offending figure covered in plastic. Outside Delhi statues of military and British royalty languish, a ‘shambles’ in a ‘veritable dust bowl’ (Times of India) awaiting a revamp that never seems to arrive, the neglect telling its own story. In the UK the national flag and the statues of slavers are being fought over by the government and sections of the population deploying memes, hashtags and video footage whilst also appearing in official and commercial films, TV, documentary, news footage. 

Submissions are welcome covering the role of the media in all forms (from public service broadcasting to social media, feature films to advertising) exploring contested representations of such symbols and their remediation. WPCC publishes research articles, commentaries and book reviews. For guidelines see here

Deadline for abstracts:
Please submit a 150-250 word abstract with keywords to WPCC’s submission system with 6 keywords by Monday 28 June 2021 by registering at https://www.westminsterpapers.org/submit/start/ uploading the abstract in addition to filling in the submission details. You will receive feedback regarding encouragement to submit a full paper (a resubmission on the system) or feedback from the issue editor(s)/WPCC within 7-10 days later.

Deadline for full papers:
Full papers are expected by Monday 30 August 2021, 23:59 submitted to the WPCC system. All papers will go through double peer-review. 

Publication date: from 1 November 2021

WPCC is an open access journal and there are no fees for contributors. Published by the University of Westminster Press in conjunction with CAMRI. All content in this issue and in its archive is available free to read. 

www.westminsterpapers.org

Image: Lenin statue at Memento Park, Szozorpark, Wikimedia Commons CC-BY-SA