Lives & Letters Mailing: January – February 2016

Lives & Letters Mailing: January & February 2016

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to another Lives & Letters Mailing. This mailing contains information about:

1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
Proper letters, real letters, fictional letters…
Interchanges and analytics
2. From Man to Man, or Perhaps Only — by Olive Schreiner, edited by Dorothy Driver
3. The idea of a life, 1500-1700 (6/17/2016) UK
4. (Dis)Connected Forms: Narratives on the Fractured Self
5. Panel on ‘Victorian Travel Writing and the Periodical Press’ for BAVS 2016, 31 Aug – 2 Sep 2016
6. Life of Testimony / Testimony of Lives: A Life-Writing Conference
7. Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies, No.5 Autumn 2015
8. 21st Annual History in the Making Graduate Conference — Recording History: Memories, Monuments, and Manuscripts

1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News

There are two items of project news we would like to share this month:

Proper letters, real letters, fictional letters…
This month, we are pleased to present the first two components of a three-part blog discussion concerning what makes for a ‘real letter’ and whether notions of the real are still defensible given the representational character of the genre. Jane Austen and her letters also get a look in! Please visit the blog to read and find out more about the blog series:
Part I: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/part-i-letters-proper-and-real/
Part II: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/part-ii-letters-real-but-not-ordinary/
Part III: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/part-iii-telling-apart-on-ellipsis-and-letters-real-and-fictional/

Interchanges and analytics
Without being intrusive, we track use of the Whites Writing Whiteness website via tools provided by Google Analytics and write up every six months a short overview of usage. These will now start appearing under the Interchanges tab on the homepage, and also via the following link: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/interchanges/google-analytics/

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2. From Man to Man, or Perhaps Only — by Olive Schreiner, edited by Dorothy Driver

Untitled This new edition of From Man to Man, edited by Dorothy Driver, corrects the editorial and proofreading errors that marred previous editions. It also provides another ending, in Schreiner’s own words, as told in a letter to a friend. This edition includes the editor’s introduction; the alternative endings; historical, literary and linguistic annotations, and extracts from Schreiner’s letters and journals. Driver’s additions all cast light on the genesis, composition, context and significance of an extraordinary novel which, through the power of its story-telling and the vibrancy of its language, envisions a future society no longer subject to inhuman racial and gender restrictions.

‘This new and authoritative edition of Schreiner’s major novel has been produced with insight and care by a leading scholar of South African writing.’
— Professor Liz Stanley, Professor of Sociology and Principal
Investigator of Olive Schreiner Letters Online, University of Edinburgh.

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3. The idea of a life, 1500-1700 (6/17/2016) UK

Friday 17 June 2016, Centre for Early Modern Studies at Oxford University
MBI Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College

‘I pray you, in your letters, / When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, / Speak of me as
I am’ — Othello, Act 5, Scene 2

What was a life in early modern England and Europe? What patterns and templates were used to sort, sift, organise and represent experience? How were models for a life produced and reworked? How was a life evaluated, in terms of various sorts of good — moral, spiritual, civic, familial, economic? What were the moments, and what were the processes, by which a representation of a life was circulated? Are Burckhardtian models of the birth of Renaissance individuality and depth still useful to describe early modern culture, or do we need new paradigms? If much recent early modern work has been organised around ideas of networks, coteries and communities, how has the idea of a life been revised? If autobiography is often seen as a nineteenth-century form, what kind of pre-history does it experience in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? How has the turn to the archive reformed our sense of early modern lives? For scholars today, what is the status of biography as a way of organising analysis of the period?

The Centre for Early Modern Studies at Oxford University invites proposals for 20-minute papers on topics that engage with the idea of a life, 1500-1700, from any disciplinary perspective. Papers are welcome on English or European materials.

Papers might include (but are not limited to) topics such as

• Life and the archive: inclusions, exclusions, mediations
• Memorialization: modes of remembering a life
• Recording lives: note-taking, diary keeping, commonplace books, information
• management
• Classical models of a life
• Saints lives and martyrologies
• Public and private lives: honour, service, love, family
• Typology and reiterated lives
• Interiority and inwardness
• Experimental predestinarianism, and the search for signs of grace
• Conduct books
• Fulfilment, contentment, happiness
• Posthumous lives, reputation, honour, influence
• Forms of autobiography and experiments in life-writing
• Lives of artists
• Exemplary lives
• The good life
• The role of biography in early modern studies
• Editing lives and letters
• The stages of life: youth and age.

Please send a 300-word proposal and a brief (one-page) CV to Dr Adam Smyth
(adam.smyth@balliol.ox.ac.uk) by 25 April 2016.

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IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/iaba/home

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4. (Dis)Connected Forms: Narratives on the Fractured Self (8th-9th September 2016)

Discourses concerning the concept of (dis)connection are especially prevalent in contemporary society. The relationship between the mind and the body – whether fractured or in flux – feeds into notions of identity, the self, and the ‘other’. Contemporary scholarship focusing upon borders, transformations and creations considers the manifold ways in which the body can be (re)organised and (dis)assembled.

The notion of (dis)connection and the fragility of form is of central focus within a range of studies and genres. From the uncanniness of being in gothic and horror studies to the cerebral and corporeal fragmentation prevalent in science and speculative fictions, narratives on the fractured self continue to raise questions about the fundamentals of the lived experience.

Plenary Speakers

Dr Catherine Spooner, Reader in Literature and Culture at Lancaster University
Asylum Chic, or, What to Wear to the Lunatics’ Ball

Dr James Aston, Subject Leader for Screen at the University of Hull
“These movies have brought me many problems”: Performance and the Traumatised Self within Hardcore Horror

Artist in Conversation

Dawn Woolley, Artist and Lecturer in Photography at Anglia Ruskin University
The Selfie: Still Life or Nature Morte?

This conference aims to engage with contemporary academic debate relating to the theme of (Dis)Connected Forms, and will explore how these discourses manifest in narratives on the fractured self.

Possible questions for consideration:
• What does it mean to be (dis)connected, fractured, transformed, metamorphosed?
• How are identities formed, managed, processed, controlled?
• Are corporeal boundaries distinct, or fluid and open to alteration?
• How is the self narrated/categorised?
• How are beings created, crafted, constructed?
• When/how can the ‘other’ be achieved?
• What threat does an ‘other’ pose?
• Can the human be defined in relation to the cyborg, the lifeless, and the animal?
• How does/will technology alter the body?
Possible focuses might include (but are not limited to):
• (Dis)Embodiment
• Identity
• Human, cyborg, lifeless, animal
• Transformation
• Metamorphosis
• Crisis of self
• The ‘other’
• Borders and boundaries
• (Re)creations
• The living and the dead
• Deviance
• Disguise
• Revision/alteration

Papers are invited that address these questions in relation to fictional and non-fictional narratives. Submissions which encourage an interdisciplinary outlook will be welcomed. These could include, but are not limited to: literature; cultural studies; the sciences; the social sciences; historical perspectives; theatrical, musical and visual narratives; (auto)biography; personal reflections and creative pieces.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words for a twenty minute paper along with a brief biographical note of no more than 100 words to disconnectedforms@gmail.com. The deadline for abstract submission is 3rd April 2016.

For any enquiries please contact Gul Dag and Sandra Mills at disconnectedforms@gmail.com. For further information please see the website at https://disconnectedforms.wordpress.com/ and follow @DisConnectForms on Twitter.

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IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/iaba/home

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5. Panel on ‘Victorian Travel Writing and the Periodical Press’ for BAVS 2016, 31 Aug – 2 Sep 2016

full name / name of organization:
Rebecca Butler (Nottingham Trent University)
contact email: rebecca.butler@ntu.ac.uk

I’m putting together a panel on Travel Writing and Periodical Press for this year’s British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS) Conference, “Consuming the Victorians” (http://bavs2016.co.uk/).

The panel, thus far, looks at women’s serial periodical travel writing. My paper will focus on the travel writing of Frances Minto Elliot (née Dickinson) in The New Monthly Magazine, while the second panellist, Teja Pusapati (University of Oxford), will discuss Harriet Martineau’s travel reportage on Ireland. However, we invite proposals on any aspect of travel and the Victorian periodical.

The BAVS deadline for proposals is 1 March 2016, so I would be looking for completed abstracts by 21 February so that I can draw the panel together.
Please register your initial interest by emailing me at your earliest convenience.

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IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/iaba/home

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6. Life of Testimony / Testimony of Lives: A Life-Writing Conference

Testimony evokes first and foremost legal connotations and images of the courtroom. In this context testimony is bound by strict procedural conventions and the act of testifying in a courtroom can incur actual legal consequences. Outside of the courtroom, however, life-writing (in its broadest sense) can serve as a form of testimony which, while not necessarily causing specific legal ramifications, presents a life’s experience for judgment by the public. This relationship between an idea of testimony and the practice of life-writing is twofold: on the one hand, authors of life-writing may have certain testimonial or confessional intentions and use writing as a way of bearing witness. Readers, on the other hand, may interpret various forms of life-writing as testimony even if the author’s intentions about recording their experience are unknown. The act of interpreting or employing life-writing as testimony thus demands ethical scrutiny from readers as well as scholars using such materials.

This conference aims to explore the notion of testimony as an idea that pervades the practice, reception and interpretation of life-writing across time periods, academic disciplines and literatures. We are interested in testimony as a broad concept, and hope to investigate its scope and impact as an interpretive lens through which the breadth of life-writing can be viewed. Not only does testimony bear witness to the lives of individuals, it takes on a life (and even an afterlife) of its own as it is read and reinterpreted throughout history.

Confirmed Keynotes: Professor Paul Strohm (Columbia University), Professor Roger Woods (Nottingham University).

Papers are invited from all scholars (including postgraduate students) across the fields of (comparative) literature, history, philosophy, art, cultural studies, religious studies, curation and conservation of archival material, memory studies, and film studies. Topics could include but are not limited to:

· The ethics of producing, reading and interpreting life-writing as a form of testimony
· Stylistic, rhetorical and aesthetic dimensions of life-writing
· The relationship between authors and readers of life-writing
· Truth and subjectivity
· The afterlife of testimony
· Images as testimony
· Culture as testimony, eg. published diaries of Holocaust survivors
· Persuasion and manipulation of and within life-writing sources
· Instrumentalisation of life-writing for political purposes
· Life-writing as (historical) evidence and the act of bearing witness
· Life-writing and the law
· Reappropriation and adaptation of life-writing in popular culture
· History and the individual
· Challenges and conditions of writing lives

The conference will be hosted at Queen Mary University of London (Arts Two lecture theatre) on 5 and 6 May 2016, the registration fee will be £35,-/£20,- (non-concession/concession).

Please submit a short abstract (c. 300 words) and a short bio (c. 100 words) to Lotte Fikkers and Melissa Schuh at lifeoftestimony@gmail.com by Sunday 17 January 2016. Notification of acceptance will be given by 8 February 2016.

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IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/iaba/home

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7. Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies, No.5 Autumn 2015
Center for Life Writing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

CONTENTS

Special Section: Interview
◎Life Writing Studies from 1970s to the Present………… Margaretta Jolly
◎ My Autobiography Study………… Paul John Eakin

Special Section: Zi Zhi Tong Jian(Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance) Study
◎The Biographical Value of Zi Zhi Tong Jian………Yang Zhengrun
◎The Intermittent Narrative: On the Biographical Art in Zi Zhi Tong Jian…………Liu Jialin

Comparative Biography
◎ The Subject and Identity in Early Chinese American Girl’s Autobiography: Second Daughter of the Family and Fifth Chinese Daughter
………… Cheng Tsun-Jen
◎ The Giant’s Mottled Figure: A Comparative Study of Three Shakespeare’s Biographies………Gong Like

History of Life Writing
◎The Social Transformation and the Trajectory of Hagiography in Seventeenth-Century Britain………Li Kaiping

Text Study
◎ Beteen Authenticity and Literariness: Reading Alice Munro：Writing Her Lives …………Chen Xi

Autobiography Study
◎ Anti-Egotistic Autobiography in Virginia Woolf’s A Sketch of the Past………Yan Fang
◎ “The Virtual” and “the Real” in Hong Ying’s Autobiographical Novels
………Zhu Xuchen
◎ The Depth and Breadth of “the Margin” in the Autobiography of the Northern-American Chinese Women…………Song Xiaoying
◎ Sources of Helen Keller’s Happiness: Reading Helen Keller’s Autobiography The Story of My Life…………Xue Yufeng

Subject Study
◎Sié Chéou-Kang in the Sino-French Cultural Exchange…… Tang Yuqing
◎ Factors of Tragedy in Oscar Wilde’s Character………Chen Ruihong
◎Flowering Exile: Chinese Housewife, Diasporic Experience, and Literary Representation………Da Zeng

Material Interpretation
◎ The Hands as Self-image: The Metaphor of Hand in Kafka’s Autobiographies…………Liang Qingbiao
◎ Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung and Its Illustrated Title Page: A Biographical Episode………Zhao Shankui

Material Examination
◎A Small Problem in Biography of Liang Sicheng against the Background of the Boom of Pictorial Biography………Zhang Weina

From the Life Writer
◎A Firm Advocate of National Sovereignty and Core Interests: The New Discovery in The Political Gale: A Biography of Wang Anshi………Bi Baokui

Academic Info
◎ An Exotic Flower in Russian Culture: An Overview of Post-Soviet Life of Great People…………Zhang Lei

From the Editor

We commend two interviews with distinguished life-writing theorists in this issue. In response to our questions, Margaretta Jolly, the editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of Life Writing, shows her broad academic vision especially as she looks through life-writing studies in the west since the 1970s. Paul John Eakin focuses on his objectives and propositions, including aesthetics of autobiographical discourses, the relation between fact and fiction in autobiography, the invention of story and self, the identity in autobiographical narrative, etc. All these issues are key to the autobiographical studies and deserve more reading and further exploration.

Autobiography is a hot topic in present days. We include four papers in the section of “Autobiography Study”. It will be beneficial to read them when parallelling with Paul Eakin’s autobiographical theory. Zhu Xuchen compares Hong Ying’s two autobiographical novels with her two collections of short autobiographies in “‘The Virtual’ and ‘the Real’ in Hong Ying’s autobiographical novels.” Her close reading and analysis are intriguing. Song Xiaoying’s “The Depth and Breadth of ‘the Margin’ in the Autobiography of the Northern-American Chinese Women” centers on autobiography by those Chinese females born in China’s mainland and analyzes their common theme “the margin”. With reference to the principle of functional stylistics, Xue Yufengto conducts a statistic survey of high-frequency words in Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life. She analyzes the blind and deaf-mute female writer’s source of happiness upon her finding that words of positive emotions are dominant in the text. Yan Fang’s paper features theoretical deduction. The icon in the western modern life writing, Virginia Woolf conducted unique experiments in the attempt of exploring styles and theories in auto/biography. To the extent that most of the scholarship touches upon the issue of styles, Yan Fang addresses the theoretical issue in her study of Woolf’s A Sketch of the Past with the analysis of Woolf’s “autobiographical practice of anti-egoism.” Yan’s paper concerns several problems of autobiographical ontology and has important theoretical significance.

The saying of “two prestigious Simas” is widespread in China’s historical circle. Sima Qian’s ShiJi (Records of the Grand Historian) is not only a monumental historical work, but a classical biography. The biographical value of Sima Guang’s Zi Zhi Tong Jian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance) is, however, not fully recognized till now. The special section of “Zi Zhi Tong Jian Study” is therefore set up to fill the gap. Yang Zhengrun and Liu Jialin examine this giant work from different perspectives to demonstrate the prominent biographical factors in it. Chinese culture is indispensable to the prosperity of Chinese life writing and life-writing theories. For more than one thousand years, Zi Zhi Tong Jian has been attracting generations of readers. This is why modern life writers need to study Sima Guang’s writing experience.

The history of western life writing calls for more researches too. Li Kaiping analyzes British hagiography in the seventeenth century, an obscure field in the present Chinese academia, but it should not be neglected. It is because hagiography becomes increasingly secular in that century that the next century witnesses the peak of British life writing with Samuel Johnson and James Boswell as the pacesetters. In short, the seventeenth century is the preparatory phase necessary to the rise of modern life writing.

The section of “Comparative Biography” presents two papers. Cheng Tsun-Jen the Bildungsroman by comparing Lin Tai-yi’s Second Daughter of the Family and Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter, while Gong Like turns her comparison to three Shakespeare’s biographies by Chinese authors. Both authors choose an appropriate perspective and the relevant range in accordance with features of their subjects and their corresponding biographical texts. From this point the two papers are useful reference for scholars of comparative biography. We expect more achievements in this new area.

We expect young scholars to make more findings to methodology. In the section of “Text Study,” Chen Xi conducts a research on Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives, in which the concept of “Inter-narrativity” is proposed. Like Xue Yufeng’s statistic approach of functional stylistics, Chen’s experimental effort is supposed to be encouraged.

In the section of “Subject Study,” Tang Yuqing comments on Sié Chéou-Kang, who has contributed much to Sino-French cultural communications but is nonetheless neglected. Chen Ruihong argues that, in the analysis of Oscar Wilde’s tragic fate, the literary genius is also a dandy who is the maker of his own tragedy. Through a close examination of the England residential Chinese housewife Dymia Hsiung’s life, Da Zheng digs out how she produced the highly-acclaimed-in-the-Anglosphere Flowering Exile. It is quite apparent that the authors of the three papers have made every effort to collect materials concerned.

Collecting and interpreting materials is decisive to the life writing and research. The new section “Material Interpretation” intends to demonstrate the in-depth explorations for the purpose. A biographer is said to be comparable to the detective Sherlock Holmes tracking down a criminal, for he/she has to examine a great variety of materials and discern the truth, or perceive the subject’s mind, from traces and clues out of the toil. In this section, the two writers have both perused and analyzed materials about Kafka, who is an important representative of the Western modernist school of writers and famous for his difficult works. Liang Qingbiao’s The Hands as Self-image examines the image of “hand” that frequently appeared in Kafka’s letters and diaries, so as to explore his spiritual world through in-depth analysis and the combination of Kafka’s thoughts and experience. Zhao Shankui focuses on the illustrated title page of Die Verwandlung, Kafka’s representative work. With respect to what the illustration conveys, what it relates to Kafka, and how critics interpretate it, Dr. Zhao proves that in between the biographical facts and the interpretations there is a meaning-generating space. The two papers are so fascinating that they must be inspiring to life-writing researchers.

The section of “Material Examination” sees Zhang Weina’s study. Liang Sicheng (1901-1972), the Chinese architect, had an car accident in 1923. There since has been a controversy on whether his left or right leg was hurt. Such a trivial and negligible anecdote is looked into by Ms Zhang minutely. The study discovers questions in the anecdote and finds the truth. This is the proper attitude in the life-writing research.

Bi Baokui the biographer gives an account of his experience of writing The Political Gale: A Biography of Wang Anshi and expresses his understanding of the subject. He believes that Wang Anshi, the Chinese historical figure, is not only a staunch reformer but also a firm advocate of national sovereignty and core interests. Bi proposes the dialog with the spirit of the subject so as to depict his inner world. This just echoes the prerequisites of modern biography.

Russia boasts a tradition of life writing for great people. In the section of “Academic Info,” Zhang Lei briefs on the development of Russia’s Life of Great People, which demonstrates Russia’s national willpower from the start. The reason why all forms of ideology attach great importance to life writing is attributable to the function of edification. Russia’s approach is appropriate to its social characteristics and cultural tradition. This contains experiences that deserve further researches.

August, 2015

Call for Articles

Life writing studies, which have moved onto the central stage in the academia, have gained ever more attention both in and outside China. The biannual journal entitled the Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies aims to stimulate Chinese life writing studies, provides a forum for scholars of various disciplines both at home and abroad, attracts and promotes specialists in the field.

In an attempt to bring out the latest development of the research for life writing, the Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies seeks to, in modern visions and views, explore theoretical, historical, cultural aspects of life writing, focus on case studies, textual analysis, feature studies and deal with issues in the life writing practices. It also takes as its fundamental task expanding and enhancing the substance of life writing studies and stimulating live discussions of all the issues accordingly. The sections in the journal include interviews, book reviews, and biography-writings in the form of various media, in addition to articles. Long-length articles (10,000 Chinese characters; or 8,000 English words) or short essays (4,000 Chinese characters; or 2,000 English words) sparkling with insights and originality are welcomed.

The journal accepts submissions in Chinese or English. Articles and interviews should not exceed 10,000 Chinese characters, or 8,000 English words, notes included. Reviews should be about 4,000-5000 Chinese characters; or 2,000-3000 English words in length. Submissions should be double-spaced, in a Times New Roman 12 point font; or in Chinese Song character small 4font. Paragraphs should be indented, rather than separated with a space. Footnotes are serialized on each page separately, with the sign ①,②,③ …. Citations should be formatted according to the MLA Style or the standard sheet in the author’s field. Acknowledgments (if applicable) should be given in a footnote at the beginning of the notes section. Please include a 150-word abstract and a biographical note. The journal follows a double-blind peer review policy. Submissions should be previously unpublished and should not currently be under consideration by other journals.

The author is in charge of his/her own academic honesty. All images must be used by permission only.
Work should be submitted by e-mail in Word format to the email address: sclw209@sina.com
Two complimentary copies of the issue will be sent to the author when his/her work is published.

The Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies is based in SJTU Center for Life Writing. We welcome suggestions and proposals, from which we believe the journal will surely benefit.

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IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/iaba/home

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8. 21st Annual History in the Making Graduate Conference — Recording History: Memories, Monuments, and Manuscripts

Concordia University’s 21st Annual History in the Making conference aims to open a dialogue on various historical mediums and how they are used to institutionalize and represent our diverse past. With your contributions, HIM is looking to analyze and improve our discipline’s understanding of historiography, entrenched narratives, and the intersection between public and academic memory.

Of particular interest to this conference is a dissection of truth-telling, memory, and historical representation in both public and private spaces. In what ways do mediums and methods of academic research guide and influence history itself? As government memorials, museum curation, and published works seek to construct a specific version of our past, how does this contend with sub-altern narratives? Does your work touch on ideas of representation, challenging entrenched historical accounts, or reinterpreting an event from our collective memory? Or perhaps how the public interacts with, consumes, or even corroborates history?

The HIM Conference’s Organizing Committee invites graduate students from all disciplines to submit proposals. Les communications en français sont également encouragées.

Whites Writing Whiteness

Letters, Domestic Figurations & Representations of Whiteness in South Africa 1770s-1970s

Lives & Letters Mailing: January – February 2016

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