Lives & Letters Mailing: June 2016
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to another Lives & Letters Mailing. This month’s mailing contains information about:
1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
• Happy Birthday, Norbert Elias
• New! Thinking with Elias: Figurations & Social Change
• New! How-to post: Writing from Archival Research
• From the Weekly Blog: Earliest letter discovered
• From the Weekly Blog: The Stanford case and letterness
• From the Weekly Blog: Bloomberg Tablets
2. Special Issue of Women’s Writing “Generations”
3. Call for Papers: WHS Annual Conference – Feminisms: Histories, Ideas & Practice From the Medieval to the Modern, c.2000
4. New book: WAR AND WOMEN ACROSS CONTINENTS
5. Narratives of the (Un)self: American Autothanatographers, 17th-21st centuries Edited Collection
6. Call for Papers: Ideas that can only be (re)counted: Narrative (and) Politics
7. [MASSOBS] EVENT: 18 July 2016 – Who are the Mass Observation Writers, 1981-2016
——————————
1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
There are six new items of project news we would like to share this month:
Happy Birthday, Norbert Elias
Wednesday 22nd June marks what would have been Norbert Elias’s 119th birthday. Please raise a glass (or in our case, a forkful of birthday cake) to Elias!
New! Thinking with Elias: Figurations & Social Change
The sociologist Norbert Elias is a complex theorist whose considerable body of work ranges over formal and abstract, middle-range and grounded forms of theorising, and consequently there are many ways in which his key ideas can be explained. The foundation-stones are encapsulated in two central terms for Elias: ‘sociogenesis’ and ‘figuration’. These are explored though discussion of some of Elias’s writing as well as in relation to the WWW project. To read more, please visit the post: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/thinking-with-elias/figurations-and-change/
New! How-to post: Writing from Archival Research
Writing about an archival research project should be built into all stages of its activities. Following through on this will mean that the researcher will become habituated to documenting the trail and development of their activities and ideas. This includes the where, what and why aspects, and also data recording, analysis and interpretation, and so should occur from the very start of a piece of research through to its conclusion. This how-to provides a step-by-step guide structured around seven ideas for trouble-free writing. Please visit the how-to post here: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/how-to/how-to-write/
From the Weekly Blog: Earliest letter discovered in Britain
In the UK news on Wednesday 1 June 2016 were reports of excavations at a major site in London that have uncovered Roman buildings, roads, and large amounts of other material including many letters and other documents. One of these is the earliest letter, dated to AD 43-53 and written in Britain, as far as Roman findings to date establish. To see a photograph of the letter and read more about it, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-earliest-letter-ever-discovered-in-britain/
From the Weekly Blog: The Stanford case and letterness
Sadly, the letter and uses of letters are once more in the news, having re-surfaced in the public domain this month with regard to the Stanford court case. Different kinds of letters written for different purposes have been issued and counter-issued and some have gone viral. What does this set of addresses/statements and counter-addresses/statements say about letters? To read the main letters in full (via provided links), accompanied by brief commentary, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/letters-again-in-the-news/
From the Weekly Blog: Bloomberg Tablets
Excavations at the building site for the headquarters of Bloomberg PL in the City of London have unearthed many exciting finds over the last few years. Prime among them must be the large number of Roman writing tablets that have been preserved by the damp conditions of the ground near the Walbrook river area on the site. In thinking about the structure and content of the Bloomberg tablets, the key question of ‘what is a letter, and where does letterness begin and end?’ is immediately raised. To read more, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/letters-from-some-romans-the-bloomberg-tablets/
——————————
2. Special Issue of Women’s Writing “Generations”
Special Issue Call for Papers: WOMEN’S WRITING (Winter 2017)
“Generations”
In honor of the 25th anniversary of the 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers Association in 2017, Women’s Writing invites submissions for a special issue on the theme of “Generations.” While generational transitions are often productive and even revolutionary, they are seldom ever easy or smooth. Such transitions may be accompanied by paradigm shifts, struggles to be heard, or difficulty letting go. In this spirit, the editors especially welcome investigations into the complexities of generational exchange and transition in the field of women’s writing.
Papers may focus on generation as a biological, cultural, social, historical, or political process as well as on attendant manifestations in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and contemporary scholarly discourses. Explorations should illuminate shifts in literary studies, women’s writing, and/or critical practice.
Topics may include but are not limited to: mentoring relationships, conflicts across the generations, literary periodization, models of literary production, theories of regeneration, reproduction and maternity, feminist prehistories, and the future of women’s writing.
We invite essays of 4,000-7,000 words in length (including notes) for the Winter 2017 issue.
Please submit abstracts of 200 words to the editors, Doreen Thierauf and Lauren Pinkerton (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) at generations2017@unc.edu, by August 1, 2016.
Complete essays will be due February 1, 2017. Please prepare contributions according to MLA style (8th edition) and in accordance with the journal’s author guidelines and style sheet (to be accessed on this page: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/style/layout/style_rwow.pdf).
—
* * *
IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
——————————
3. Call for Papers: WHS Annual Conference – Feminisms: Histories, Ideas & Practice From the Medieval to the Modern, c.2000
Friday 9 September 2016
Glasgow Women’s Library
http://womenshistoryscotland.org/
Women’s History Scotland are delighted to announce that the Annual Women’s History Scotland Conference will this year take place on Friday 9 September at Glasgow Women’s Library.
The Sue Innes Memorial Lecture will be given by Zoë Fairbairns
http://www.zoefairbairns.co.uk/index.htm
Paper proposals are now welcomed on this year’s theme of Feminisms: Histories, Ideas & Practice, including, but absolutely not limited to, the following (broadly defined) areas:
• Political, social and cultural activism
• Defining ‘feminisms’ and ‘feminists’ across history
• Feminisms at ‘work’ and in the workplace
• Feminism in popular culture and the arts
• Feminist approaches to the body, health and welfare
• Feminist approaches to sexualities and sexual identities
• Understanding violence from feminist perspectives
• The role of feminism in historical practice & methodology
We encourage submissions from those working on any period within the above time-span whose research complements the overarching conference theme. Proposals which have an international or transnational focus are especially welcomed and we particularly encourage submissions from postgraduate students.
Individual or co-authored abstracts of c.200 words (for 20-minute presentations) should be submitted as a word document attachment to whsconference2016@gmail.com no later, please, than the final deadline of Friday 1 July 2016. Please ensure to include author name, presentation title and affiliation.
All further queries regarding the conference can be directed to the conference email: whsconference2016@gmail.com
——————————
4. New book: WAR AND WOMEN ACROSS CONTINENTS
50% discount from Berghahn Books
buy from www.berghahnbooks.com with the code ARD131
Valid until June 30th 2016
WAR AND WOMEN ACROSS CONTINENTS
Autobiographical and Biographical Experiences
Edited by Shirley Ardener, Fiona Armitage-Woodward,
and Lidia Dina Sciama
978-1-78533-013-1 £56.00 £28.00 Hb
“Interesting and timely. Using different research methods to arrive at the story of women involved in war and conflicts adds value to existing feminist research methods. The academic, and especially feminist, readership will benefit from this volume.” – Nahla Abdo, Carleton University
“I enjoyed reading this book and admired its range across time and space. The variety of cases included is its main strength.” – Linda McDowell, University of Oxford
Drawing on family materials, historical records, and eyewitness accounts, this book shows the impact of war on individual women caught up in diverse and often treacherous situations. It relates stories of partisans in Holland, an Italian woman carrying guns and provisions in the face of hostile soldiers, and Kikuyu women involved in the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya. A woman displaced from Silesia recalls fleeing with children across war-torn Germany, and women caught up in conflicts in Burma and in Rwanda share their tales. War’s aftermath can be traumatic, as shown by journalists in Libya and by a midwife on the Cambodian border who helps refugees to give birth and regain hope. Finally, British women on active service in Afghanistan and at NATO headquarters also speak.
Shirley Ardener, has carried out many years fieldwork (until 1987 with her husband Edwin) in Nigeria and in Cameroon where she is still involved with the University of Buea and the National Anglophone Archives set up by herself and Edwin. She was the Founding Director of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women (1983-1997) renamed the International Gender Studies at Lady Margaret Hall Oxford University of which she is a Research Associate. Books include Swedish Ventures in Cameroon (2002) and Changing Sex and Bending Gender (2005).
Fiona Armitage-Woodward has held various teaching and research posts, including at Oxfam. She was a founding member of the Swaziland Society (1991) and has edited for ‘Focus on Swaziland’. Her publications include contributions to Focus on Swaziland, which she has edited, and “Imitating Ethnicity: Land, Territoriality and Identity in a Swazi Christian Church” in Land and Territoriality, ed., Michael Saltman (2002).
Lidia Dina Sciama is a former Director, and currently a Research Associate of Oxford’s International Gender Studies Center (IGS). Her publications include articles on women’s crafts, ‘Academic Wives’ and ‘Sport and Ethnicity’. She is the author of A Venetian Island: Environment, History and Change in Burano (2003).
See other side for contents and order information
WAR AND WOMEN ACROSS CONTINENTS
Autobiographical and Biographical Experiences
Contents
Introduction: Women’s Autobiographical and Biographical Experiences of War across Continents: An Introduction Shirley Ardener
Chapter 1. The Resistance of Francesca Tonetti in German-Occupied Venice 1943-1945 Lidia Dina Sciama
Chapter 2. Ank Faber-Chabot, A Dutchwoman who Sheltered Jews in World War II Marieke Faber Clarke
Chapter 3. Hildegard Jaschok’s Testimony: Expulsion and Hope in World War II Maria Jaschok
Chapter 4. Mau Mau Women: Sixty Years Later Tabitha Kanogo
Chapter 5. Women and Conflict in Burma’s Borderlands Mandy Sadan
Chapter 6. Rebuilding Family, Body and Soul: New Life on the Cambodian Border Janette Davies
Chapter 7. Rwandan Women Fighting for the Rwandan Patriotic Front (1990-1994) Hannah Spens-Black
Chapter 8. Women War Correspondents in 2013 Glenda Cooper
Chapter 9. Talking Gender, War & Security at NATO Matthew Hurley
Chapter 10. Military Masculinities and Counterinsurgency Theory in Afghanistan: An Uneasy Relationship? Rachel Grimes
——————————
5. Narratives of the (Un)self: American Autothanatographers, 17th-21st centuries
deadline for submissions: October 1, 2016
full name / name of organization: E-Rea, peer-reviewed journal of Aix-Marseille University’s English and American Studies Unit, France
contact email: claire.sorin@univ-amu.fr
Since the 1980s-1990s, the terms “autopathography” and “autothanatography” have increasingly been used by the theorists of autobiography. Defined by Thomas Couser as “life writing that focuses on the single experience of critical illness” (“Introduction: The Embodied Self”, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, vol.6, no 1, Spring 1991, 1), autopathography often— but not always—envisions death. The aporic term autothanatography, the writing of one’s own death, has provided a useful framework for the theorists interested in the relationships between writing, the self and death. Much of the theoretical background of autothanatography can be attributed to French thinkers (Jacques Derrida who spoke about his “testamentary writing”, Louis Marin or again Maurice Blanchot, the very embodiement of the modern myth of the writer, according to Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe who described Blanchot’s both existence and writing as “posthumous” …) but recent works on autothanatography have also drawn inspiration from other European or American writers such as Paul de Man, Jeremy Tambling, Laura Marcus, Linda Anderson, Susan Sontag, Judith Butler or Felicity Nussbaum. Still, a brief overview of recent autothanatographical studies seems to indicate that American writings have not been as thoroughly or systematically explored as European ones.
The purpose of this volume is to address this void by questioning the evolution, the practices and the perspectives of American autothanatographers ever since the 17th century. While not systematically disconnecting death from disease, we will consider how one’s own death shapes the author’s writing project, turning it into a deathward project actually emerging “from beyond the grave”. The focus, therefore, will not necessarily be placed on the process of dying (as it is in autopathographies), but on death itself as at once the starting point and the result of the writing process. In a 1978 article entitled “The Shape of Death in American Autobiography,” Thomas Couser pointed out that “the form and content of the narratives are often significantly shaped by the writer’s preoccupation with death. A surprising number of our major autobiographers anticipate or offer a substitute for their own deaths; some even point beyond it, offering intimations of their own immortality” (“The Shape of Death in American Autobiography”, The Hudson Review, Vol.31, n.1, Spring 1978, 53). While such preoccupation with death is likely to be a common feature among autobiographers in general, this volume will seek to delineate and explore the cultural, religious, racial and gender parameters that could contribute to the specificities of American autothanatography. Because of this approach, the historical timeframe is deliberately broad, reaching back to the 17th century, when religion pervaded autobiographical writings, up to the early 21st century. Also, because the boundaries between reality and fiction are by no means clear-cut in the genre of autobiography (and perhaps even less so with autothanatography), contributions examining autofiction will be welcome. Finally, we wish to envision a large spectrum of autothanatographical expressions, including textual genres such as diaries, memoirs, and autofictional works but also iconographic or visual productions dealing with the author’s own death (comics, photography, self portraits, art works…).
While the essays are expected to explore American autothanatographical practices, they must also endeavor to anchor those practices in—or detach them from—the theoretical discourses shaping autothanatography.Ultimately, the volume will question whether the individual act of writing about/from/against one’s death has the power to (de)construct “a death of one’s own” (Rilke), and whether such writings can collectively constitute a specifically American literary phenomenon.
Articles may examine:
-Special historical moments liable to (dis)connect the individual from/to a sense of national/collective identity
-Issues of race/class/gender/religion inasmuch as they may impact the way in which death affects autobiographical practice
– How cultural and medical discourses on death shape individual representations of one’s own death
-The literary, poetic and/or pictorial devices that allow a writer or artist to represent his/her own dying or death
-Double-bottom texts in which the exploration and narrative of the death of the other (thanatography) hide an autothanatographical project
-The notion of mortiferous writing, its modes of existence and implications
Articles in English should be sent to claire.sorin@univ-amu.fr and sophie.vallas@univ-amu.fr for October 1, 2016.
Please use E-rea’s stylesheet (http://erea.revues.org/2153). If you decide to submit a contribution, please let us know by sending us a message with a brief description of your project by June 30, 2016.
—
* * *
IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
sites.google.com/a/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
——————————
6. Call for Papers Ideas that can only be (re)counted: Narrative (and) Politics
Call for papers
Dossier. Ideas that can only be (re)counted: Narrative (and) Politics
Open until: August 20, 2016
More information at www.criticacontemporanea.org
Elizabeth Dauphinee (York University) & Paulo Ravecca (Universidad de la República) (Editors)
In recent years narrative approaches have flourished within International Relations and Political Science, offering a powerful alternative to the methods of mainstream academia. Books and articles that reflect on the possibilities of narrative, but also tell stories themselves, have made their way to scholarly forums and presses, of which the foundation of the Journal of Narrative Politics was a keystone. Theorization as well as the practice of narrative in scholarly settings has deployed a powerful insight: Some ideas and experiences cannot be ‘counted’ but only ‘recounted’. Story-telling brings about epistemological and theoretical openings that matter for academia and beyond. Contrary to the prevailing sense that narrative is a kind of standpoint epistemology, uncritiqueable in its radical subjectivity, narrative approaches can ─ through their complexity and plurality ─ offer an invitation to open critique that is frequently obliterated in classical academic forms. The encounter between the languages of science and literature problematizes objectivist rationality and shows how theory becomes practice and practice theory.
This Dossier aims to critically engage with the narrative turn in the social sciences. We are less concerned with the objectivist academic analysis of narrative (such as in the case of interviews or classical ethnographies) and more with the expression of narrative itself as a mode of knowing and a form of scholarship that does not displace but enriches other, more conventional scholarly methods. We also look for reflections on the possibilities (as well as limitations) of narrative. Given the current dual location of the co-editors of this dossier (Canada and Uruguay) we are excited about multiplying our geographies and disciplinary backgrounds.
We encourage submissions of original stories/narratives that explore the intersections between the personal, the political, scholarship, and/or science. We also encourage the submission of other aesthetic forms – works of art or photography, and experimental forms of writing. We will consider academic analyses of existing narrative texts provided they are written in an accessible form for a non-specialized audience and free of jargon.
The Dossier editors are committed to the highest academic standards and intellectual engagement. We will provide feedback on manuscripts and they will also be subjected to a robust peer-review process.
For enquiries contact Paulo Ravecca at: paulo.ravecca@cienciassociales.edu.uy
Crítica Contemporánea. Revista de Teoría Política (ISSN 1688-7849, Latindex) is a free access international peer-reviewed journal, open to contributions from diverse methodological, philosophical and ideological perspectives. It publishes articles on normative political theory, Latin American political theory and philosophy, critical theory, political history, history of political ideas, feminist political theory, queer theory, cultural analysis of political life, cultural political studies, postcolonial political theory and political theory informed by Sociology, Law, Economics and Anthropology. It is published annually by the Grupo de Estudios sobre Ciudadanía (Study Group on Citizenship) of the Political Science Institute at the Universidad de la República (Montevideo, Uruguay).
——————————
7. [MASSOBS] EVENT: 18 July 2016 – Who are the Mass Observation Writers, 1981-2016
18 July 2016 – Who are the Mass Observation Writers, 1981-2016?
Monday 18th July 2016 (10am-4pm), the Mass Observation Archive will host the launch of ‘The Defining Mass Observation Project’ (https://definingmassobservation.wordpress.com/about/mass-observation-project-mop) at The Keep. This is an ESRC funded research collaboration between the Universities of Southampton, Birmingham and Surrey and the Mass Observation Archive.
• Introduction from Professor Pat Thane
• Launch of an online database
• Using online interactive tools for sampling writers & writing
• Findings on writers’ socio-demographic characteristics
• Discussion of writers’ class and identity
• Memory and Mass Observation writing
• Using computer assisted data analysis (CAQDAS) to analyse writing
• Bring a laptop to use the database at the workshop!
Registration is £15 and includes lunch. Book here: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/who-are-the-mass-observation-writers-1981-2016-tickets-25268705378
Best wishes,
Jessica Scantlebury
Jessica Scantlebury
The Mass Observation Archive
The Keep
Woollards Way
Brighton
BN1 9BP
j.c.scantlebury@sussex.ac.uk
+441273 337515
www.massobs.org.uk
www.thekeep.info
twitter.com/MassObsArchive
——————————
