Lives & Letters Mailing: October 2017
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to another Lives & Letters Mailing. This month’s mailing contains information about:
1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
– From the blog: The fire next time? A Five-part series
– From the blog: The best bit of the WWW website, and what else could be added
2. Announcing publication of Rethinking Dance History: Issues and Methodologies, 2nd Edition – including a piece by a list member
3. New book! Paths to Fulfillment: Women’s Search for Meaning and Identity By Ruthellen Josselson
4. The Rise of Autotheory, Inside and Outside the Academy (9/21/2017; 3/29-4/1/2018) Los Angeles, USA ACLA
5. Object Biographies Conference (10/15/2017; 3/2-3/2018) Helsinki, Finland
6. 2nd Call ESREA Life History and Biography Conference, Turin, March, 2018
7. Biography 40:2 (Spring 2017) is now available on Project Muse
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1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
There are two new items of project news we would like to share:
From the blog: The fire next time? A Five-part series
Continuing the discussion and analysis of the crisis in South African universities in 2015 and 2016, all the instalments of this multi-part blog have now appeared on the WWW blog, with comparisons drawn between these student protests and those of earlier years and particularly 1920, 1946 and 1955-56.
Mentioned in our previous Lives and Letters mailing, Part 1 takes off from a discussion of recent books with very different viewpoints on the recent events. It also provides background information about South Africa’s schools and colleges. Click here to read more: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-fire-next-time-part-1/
Part 2 is concerned with the private troubles/public issues aspect and discusses both macro and micro matters of relevance. Click here to read more: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-fire-next-time-part-2/
Part 3 draws on the ideas of Norbert Elias in reaching an interpretation of the hows and whys of the protests. Click here to read more: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-fire-next-time-part-3/
Part 4 turns attention to the student protests of 1920 and 1946, using those occurring at Lovedale as a case study, and making comparisons with Fort Hare in 19 55–56. Click here to read more: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-fire-next-time-part-4/
Part 5 makes some comparisons between the earlier protests and those of 2015 and 2016. Click here to read more: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-fire-next-time-part-5/
***For non-South Africans, the discussions in Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5 will not make full sense without also reading the contextual information in Part 1.
From the blog: The best bit of the WWW website, and what else could be added
As part of regular WWW consultations with readers and users, a few weeks ago an item in a Lives & Letters mailing asked two questions about website use and offered a modest prize for the best response. We’re pleased to say that the prize has been scooped by Astrid von Rosen, from the University of Gothenburg. This blog post includes Astrid’s replies to the posed questions, which we found most helpful and interesting. To read the blog, please click there: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/the-best-bit-of-the-www-website/
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2. Announcing publication of Rethinking Dance History: Issues and Methodologies, 2nd Edition – including a piece by a list member
Rethinking Dance History: Issues and Methodologies, 2nd Edition
Edited by Larraine Nicholas, Geraldine Morris has now been published!
We would especially like to call readers’ attention to a chapter written by list member Astrid von Rosen, entitled “‘Dream no Small Dreams!’ Impossible archival imaginaries in dance community archiving in a digital age”, pp. 148–159.
Abstract
Drawing on recent research at the University of Gothenburg and University College London, this chapter aims to chart and theorize the challenges faced by local independent dance communities when it comes to realizing their archival dreams. Three case studies are presented, exploring how dance archives have been dreamt of and actually have emerged in the city of Gothenburg, as well as how they are understood and used by the communities and by scholars investigating independent dance. Productive frictions are identified between an unimaginative and essentially positivist understanding of archives and sources as plain containers of facts, and the recent recognition that archival absences and imaginaries have the power to motivate research, propel change and stimulate the writing of new histories. Turning to recent theoretical development within archival theory, I use Anne Gilliland and Michelle Caswell’s terms “impossible archival imaginaries” and “imagined records”, as they “offer important affective counterbalances and sometimes resistance to legal, bureaucratic, historical and forensic notions of evidence” (Gilliland & Caswell 2016:55). The chapter concludes with a presentation of arguments for a methodologically conscious, digitally engaged participatory approach (“dancing where we dig – digging where we dance”) to local independent dance archiving and archival research as a way of further augmenting the potentially productive role of dreaming big dreams.
Publisher’s description of the volume:
The need to ‘rethink’ and question the nature of dance history has not diminished since the first edition of Rethinking Dance History. This revised second edition addresses the needs of an ever-evolving field, with new contributions considering the role of digital media in dance practice; the expansion of performance philosophy; and the increasing importance of practice-as-research. A two-part structure divides the book’s contributions into:
- Why Dance History? – the ideas, issues and key conversations that underpin any study of the history of theatrical dance.
- Researching and Writing – discussions of the methodologies and approaches behind any successful research in this area.
Everyone involved with dance creates and carries with them a history, and this volume explores the ways in which these histories might be used in performance-making – from memories which establish identity to re-invention or preservation through shared and personal heritages. Considering the potential significance of studying dance history for scholars, philosophers, choreographers, dancers and students alike, Rethinking Dance History is an essential starting point for anyone intrigued by the rich history and many directions of dance.
To read more about this, or to order yourself a copy, please follow this link: https://www.routledge.com/Rethinking-Dance-History-Issues-and-Methodologies-2nd-Edition/Nicholas-Morris/p/book/9781138682917
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3. New book! Paths to Fulfillment: Women’s Search for Meaning and Identity By Ruthellen Josselson
with promotion code ASPROMP8 to save 30%!
Paths to Fulfillment: Women’s Search for Meaning and Identity
By Ruthellen Josselson
How do women create fulfilling lives? How does the identity they choose (or not choose) by the end of their college career affect how their lives unfold? For 35 years, Ruthellen Josselson has followed 25 randomly selected women who graduated from college in the early 1970s. Because these women came of age at this particular time in history, they were the trailblazers in creating new possibilities for women’s lives and were among the first of the Women’s Liberation Movement to take on meaningful roles in the work world. These “real” women, in contrast to the pervasive media stereotypes of the time, took on the challenge in very different ways and championed very different lives for themselves. In Paths to Fulfillment: Women’s Search for Meaning and Identity, Josselson traces the stages of these women’s lives and the ways in which identity, intimacy, and care for others over time leads to fulfillment, or in some cases, a lack of fulfillment. She examines the complexity of the relationship between a woman’s roots, her efforts to create a unique life for herself, and how others become part of the self altogether. Josselson examines individual lives in depth for clues to understanding the strengths that help a woman to find fulfillment, and how a focus on raising the younger generation plays a role in creating this identity. With remarkable clarity and insight, Josselson challenges the common stereotypes of women, and shows how work, love, and care are all intertwined in a woman’s feeling of identity.
- Presents the true life stories of a special cohort of baby boomer women who were the first to take advantage of new possibilities for women and, in doing so, created the sea change in the roles they could take on in the world
- Explores the types of paths this generation of women were able to follow over 35 years, and where they are now as a result of these choices
- Links the choices women make in their early 20s to the shaping of their entire adult lives
- Shows how not all women achieve fulfillment in late midlife, and the reasons why
Ruthellen Josselson is a psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Fielding Graduate University.
Order online at www.oup.com/academic
with promotion code ASPROMP8 to save 30%
June 2017 Hardcover 328 pages
9780190250393
$29.95 ($20.97 with discount)
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4. The Rise of Autotheory, Inside and Outside the Academy (9/21/2017; 3/29-4/1/2018) Los Angeles, USA ACLA
[ACLA 2018] The Rise of Autotheory, Inside and Outside the Academy
deadline for submissions: September 21, 2017
full name / name of organization: Margeaux Feldman & Philip Sayers
contact email: p.sayers@mail.utoronto.ca
“[E]ven the most abstract theories are, to varying degrees, informed by their subjective conditions of existence: by, that is, the inner psychic dynamics of the theorist” — Stuart Hall, Familiar Stranger
“[T]heory can do more the closer it gets to the skin.” — Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life
In the quotations above, Stuart Hall and Sara Ahmed both make a case for attending to the ways in which the production of theoretical knowledge is tied up in the mind and body of the theorist. The past five years have seen an increasing number of published works that take up this same call to action, foregrounding theory’s basis in and connection to the lived experience of the theorist, and challenging the erasure of the personal within academic writing.
Maggie Nelson, following Paul B. Preciado, has referred to this emergent genre as “autotheory.” This seminar starts from the premise that autotheoretical writing does important work in shifting how we think about the relationships between the literary and the theoretical, between the personal and the political, and between the academic humanities and the wider world. This panel seeks critical engagements with autotheory that help trace these kinds of shifts. We are especially interested in:
- Tracing autotheory’s aesthetic and political genealogy through the work of thinkers who preceded the birth of the genre as we know it today. This could include feminists of color (hooks, Lorde, Anzaldúa), French theory (Barthes, Deleuze and Guattari, Irigaray), Black Studies (Du Bois, C. L. R. James, Saidiya Hartman), New Narrative (Dodie Bellamy, Robert Glück, Kathy Acker), and other fields.
- Locating autotheory in relation to other genres and modes: poetry, the novel, autofiction, memoir, confessional, film, visual art, performance, the essay.
- Thinking through autotheory’s conditions of production in, beyond, and under the academy, as well as in relation to the increasing precarity of academic labor today.
- Expanding the canon of contemporary autotheoretical writing. In addition to Nelson and Preciado, papers might consider the work of Barbara Browning, Christina Sharpe, Dionne Brand, Brian Blanchfield, Gail Scott, Wayne Koestenbaum, Claudia Rankine, Fred Moten, Chris Kraus, Sara Ahmed, Stuart Hall, and many others.
- Understanding autotheory in a social context, as connected to particular academic fields (Black Studies, Queer Theory, Feminist Theory), particular networks and (using Fred Moten’s phrase) “study groups,” and particular publishers (Semiotext(e), Graywolf, Wave Books).
- The challenges of writing and/or publishing autotheory for both creative writers and academics. How might a tenured professor’s production of autotheory differ from a graduate student’s engagement with the genre? Why might the division of “creative writing” versus “academic writing” be an outdated division?
- Connecting autotheory to other related terms: what Maggie Nelson has called “wild theory,” or what McKenzie Wark refers to as “low theory,” for example.
For more details or to submit a paper proposal for this seminar, please visit: https://www.acla.org/seminar/rise-autotheory-inside-and-outside-academy
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IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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5. Object Biographies Conference (10/15/2017; 3/2-3/2018) Helsinki, Finland
Object Biographies
II International Artefacta Conference
2-3 March 2018
House of Science and Letters
http://www.tieteidentalo.fi/fi/tilat-ja-tilavaraukset/kuvagalleria
Helsinki, Finland
Artefacta, the Finnish Network for Artefact Studies in collaboration with the Finnish Antiquarian Society and Nordic Association of Conservators in Finlan
‘Where does the thing come from and who made it? What has been its career so far, and what do people consider to be an ideal career for such things? What are the recognized “ages” or periods in the thing’s “life”, and what are the cultural markers for them? How does the thing’s use change with its age, and what happens to it when it reaches the end of its usefulness?’
(Igor Kopytoff: ‘The Cultural Biography of Things’, 1986)
We would like thank all those who have already submitted a proposal – we have received nearly 50 proposals – but there is still room for more.
We are pleased to announce that we are accepting proposals for presentations for our second international conference. Object biographies have been understood in both highly concrete terms as the history of relocating artefacts and retracing their physical changes and as abstract models or metaphors for outlining relationships between people and their environment.
When considering objects and material culture, object biography or life-span has become a concept encompassing a broad, multidisciplinary and diffuse field of research. The history, evolution and uses of this term have varied and have been of wide scope. The term has come to bridge various disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, art history, conservation studies, craft studies, ethnology, history, museology, the natural sciences and sociology.
We welcome all experts who work with objects and cultural heritage collections – researchers, curators, conservators and conservation scientists – to present and discuss the various meanings of object biographies. The aim is to provide a cross-section of current research and its results and an overview of the present and future directions of research in this field.
Keynote speakers
Claire Farago, Professor of Art History, University of Colorado Boulder, United States
http://cuart.colorado.edu/people/faculty/claire-farago/
Karin Margarita Frei, Research Professor in Archaeometry, National Museum of Denmark
http://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/research/research-projects/tale…
Eero Hyvönen, Director of Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities (Heldig), Finland
http://seco.cs.aalto.fi/u/eahyvone/
The conference seeks recent advances and innovations in the field of object biographies, for example:
- Case studies, overviews of the state of research and theoretical surveys
- The numerous methods with which the biographies of objects can be reconstructed and theories for analysing life-spans and materiality
- Research on conservation treatments and material/conservation science
- Collaboration projects between researchers, curators, conservators or conservation scientists
- How objects during the latter part of their life-span can cause health and safety issues particularly in museums and how organisations have found solutions to overcome these problems
The form of presentation may be a PowerPoint presentation by one or several experts, or an interview, poster or panel discussion. Please articulate clearly on your abstract the form of your presentation.
Length of the proposal for a presentation: max. 1 page
Please notice that the deadline for submissions has been extended to 15 October 2017.
Acceptance of proposals: 1 November 2017
The presentations will be organised into sessions by the conference committee. The sessions will be arranged thematically instead of according to traditional divisions between disciplines. The goal is to enhance interdisciplinary dialogue.
Please use the online proposal submission system available on the Artefacta Internet site: http://www.artefacta.fi/tapahtumat
Only proposals submitted online will be considered.
The conference fee is EUR 50.
Please send any inquiries via email to Dr Alex Snellman, Coordinator of the Artefacta Network
esinetutkimus@artefacta.fi
Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who may be interested!
Conference committee
Renja Suominen-Kokkonen, Artefacta Network (chair)
Aki Arponen, Artefacta Network
Päivi Fernström, Artefacta Network
Helena Lonkila, Nordic Association of Conservators in Finland
Nina Robbins, Nordic Association of Conservators in Finland
Alex Snellman, Artefacta Network
Marleena Vihakara, Nordic Association of Conservators in Finland
Board of the Artefacta Network
Docent, Dr Renja Suominen-Kokkonen, art history, Senior Lecturer, University of Helsinki (chair)
Dr Elina Anttila, art history, Director General of the National Museum of Finland
Conservator Aki Arponen, conservation, National Museum of Finland
Dr Päivi Fernström, craft studies, University Lecturer, University of Helsinki
Niklas Huldén, ethnology, Åbo Akademi University
Professor Paula Hohti, art and culture history, Aalto University
Professor Visa Immonen, cultural heritage studies, University of Helsinki
Professor Mika Lavento, archaeology, University of Helsinki
Docent, Dr Ildikó Lehtinen, ethnology, University of Helsinki
Dr Tiina Männistö-Funk, history, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden
Docent, Dr Minna Sarantola-Weiss, history, Head of Research, Helsinki City Museum
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IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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6. 2nd Call ESREA Life History and Biography Conference, Turin, March, 2018
ESREA – European Society for Research on the Education of Adults
Life History and Biography Network
‘Togetherness’ and its discontents
Connectivity (as well as belonging, cooperation, conflict and separation) in biographical narratives of adult education and learning
The Annual Conference in 2018 will be held in Torino, Italy, at COREP – SAA from Thursday 1st to Sunday 4th March 2018
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome back to another academic year. We hope you have all managed to find time over the summer to have a well-deserved break.
The planning for the 2018 ESREA LHBN conference is well under way. Please be aware of the new conference web address: http://www.corep.it/esrea18/
Our theme: ‘Togetherness’ and its discontents
Connectivity (as well as belonging, cooperation, conflict and separation) in biographical narratives of adult education and learning
The Annual Conference in 2018 will be held in Torino, Italy,
at COREP – SAA
from Thursday 1st to Sunday 4th March 2018
Second Call for Papers
The Network
For 25 years since its first meeting in Geneva, the Life History and Biography Network (LHBN) of ESREA has been a forum for a wide range of researchers, including doctoral students, drawing on different disciplinary backgrounds, and coming from every corner of Europe, and beyond. Our conferences are based on the recognition and celebration of the diversity of methods, approaches and epistemologies in biographical research. And our aim is to create spaces for dialogue, reflexivity and discovery, in order to sustain trustful collaboration, publications and collaborative research projects. Our recent conferences have explored the political role of life history and arts based research, the role of wisdom and the spiritual, the emotions, the embodied nature of learning and narratives, and the action of discourses in human lives; and where resources of hope lie, collectively and in individual lives, as well as in the research process.
The Conference theme
During the last conference in Copenhagen, 2017, on “Discourses we live by”, there were many moments when we reflected on the role of relationships and groups, both as resources and occasions for learning, e.g. when they offer recognition, challenges, and opportunities for reflection, and as contexts of power, oppression, and mystification, when frames of meaning and structures are imposed on us. And when our proximal system, the family and cultural groups in which we are embedded, seem unable to evolve with us. We also reflected on the role of conflict as a triggers for transformative and intercultural learning, and or a deadlock and the driving force behind dramatic escalations of violence.
We are social and communicating beings: in fact, we are born in a human group, a family, whatever this term might mean, across different cultures, and we become part of many groups, communities, teams, organizations, associations. Every time we engage with the new and different we have to learn how to position ourselves in connection to others, and to the whole. We also learn how to separate, to individuate, to take a distance, to be able to transform ourselves, and our relationships, in a healthier, safer, more respectful and rewarding ways. Separation as well as togetherness lie at the root of human flourishing. Our narratives can sustain, celebrate, or challenge the I, and the Us, in building individual and collective identities. Some questions:
What kind of learning emerges from the experiences of connectedness? Do groups, families, teams and organisations ‘learn’? How does such learning influence our lives and those whose lives we study?
What of separation processes and their place in learning?
Can life-based or narrative research itself enhance togetherness, and if so how, in which conditions and with what effects?
What are the conditions that enable people to learn within relational systems, and to transform them?
Can adult education and learning profit from a better knowledge of these issues? If so, how?
Is togetherness a motivator towards adult learning, and does education enhance togetherness?
What are, on the contrary, are the potential manifestations of dis-connection, and with what implications?
Can togetherness become a delusion, a mystification, a prison of the mind, or an obstacle in a world that celebrates individualism?
You can now submit your proposals and register through this site. The closing date for abstracts and other proposals is now the 25th October.
Can we also make you aware of a network blog that Mike Spence has set up. A message from Mike and link to the blog are below.
Very best wishes and looking forward to seeing you in Turino.
Laura, Linden and Alan
Message from Mike Spence:
This year the LHBN, after popular requests to develop opportunities for digital communication, will be trialling an online forum.
The forum will be an online space that you can register yourself to, and use to share ideas, comments, notices and any other useful information.
It is very simple to use, and we want to avoid any complexity at this stage whilst we work out if it is something that would continue to be useful to the network.
http://lhbn.boards.net/ this link will take you to the Forum Home page, where you can click Login (top right) and use your email address to create a membership, with a password.
Home | Lhbn
lhbn.boards.net
Visit our forum at: lhbn.boards.ne
You are then free to create topic threads (spaces to write for the members to see that have particular themes or questions)
Or you could simply read what others are writing about, or respond to other’s topics.
I echo that this is an experiment to see if it is useful, please give it a try. It is with our collaborative input that makes these things successful.
- Ask questions about the Theme
- Post your draft ideas for your paper
- Arrange meet ups or travel
- Discuss collaborative projects
I’m sure you’ll all come up with uses that we have not thought of. And of course, this compliments rather than replaces the valuable experience of face to face.
Best wishes,
Mike Spence
Professor Linden West PhD FRSA
Faculty of Education
Canterbury Christ Church University
North Holmes Road
Canterbury, Kent CT1 1QU, United Kingdom
Phone 044 (0)1227 782732
email address linden.west@canterbury.ac.uk
West L (2016) Distress in the city: racism, fundamentalism and a democratic education, London: Trentham Books/IOE Press is now available.
https://ioepress.co.uk/books/social-justice-equality-and-human-rights/distress-in-the-city/
‘In this brilliant and prescient book, Linden West, explores the ways in which people make, and are not just made by, history. … West does much to reclaim ‘ordinary people’s role in civic and cultural renewal, in creating new forms of localism – in which character, responsibility, vocation and hope can thrive’ (p. 166). This book is a call to us all to think hard about a workable multiculturalism (Sharon Clancy, University of Nottingham, UK International Journal of Lifelong Education, Vol 35, Issue 2, pages 1-3 2016-07-08)
‘[Linden West] seeks messages of hope from attempts by people to work together and recognise common aims and aspirations in the kind of civic renewal which is firmly based on communal values. He echoes the view of Richard Tawney that democracy is “unstable” where merely political. It must, for harmony and social health, be connected to every element of community life…. It is a powerful message, deserving of wide distribution and considered response…It is a very necessary updated version of what Richard Tawney earlier and Michael Young later in the last century fought to achieve.’ (Eric Midwinter Third Age Matters, Spring 2016)
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7. Biography 40:2 (Spring 2017) is now available on Project Muse
biography: an interdisciplinary quarterly
vol. 40, no. 2 • Spring 2017
Editor’s Note iii
In Remembrance
Barbara Harlow (1948–2017)
Laura E. Lyons, Barbara Harlow: A Remembrance via Conferences,
Readings, and Questions
S. Shankar, Remembering Barbara Harlow: Resistance and Life Writing 304
Articles
Sam Ferguson
Why Does Life Writing Talk about Science?: Foucault, Rousseau,
and the Early Journal Intime 307
This article examines the reasons why life writing makes use of discourses from the natural sciences. It focuses on the emergence of autobiography and the journal intime in France at the moment of a fundamental shift toward the modern episteme (identified by Foucault), which is both historical and person-centered.
Kathryn Sederberg
Writing through Crisis: Time, History, Futurity in German Diaries of
the Second World War 323
This article considers how diary writing mediates temporal consciousness, especially during periods of crisis. Through examples of German civilian diaries written at the end of the Second World War, I show how diaries reflect changing notions of history and futurity, producing radically presentist modes of self-representation.
Meliz Ergin
Derrida’s Otobiographies 342
This essay approaches autobiography studies through a philosophical perspective and explores Derrida’s notion of “otobiography” to elaborate on the twin problem of identity and writing. After examining the autobiographical thread in Derrida’s work and raising questions pertaining to genre and autonomy, the essay focuses on Monolingualism of the Other; or, the Prosthesis of Origin to show how Derrida’s theories of selfhood, language, and writing work themselves out in practice.
Reviews
The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century
African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman, by Galawdewos, translated
and edited by Wendy Laura Belcher and Michael Kleiner 366
Reviewed by Andrew Crislip
Speaking of the Self: Gender, Performance, and Autobiography in South Asia,
edited by Anshu Malhotra and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley 371
Reviewed by Monika Browarczyk
Women Write Iran: Nostalgia and Human Rights from the Diaspora,
by Nima Naghibi 377
Reviewed by Sanaz Fotouhi
Navigating Loss in Women’s Contemporary Memoir,
by Amy-Katerini Prodromou 382
Reviewed by Marta Bladek
The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World,
edited by Daniel Worden 386
Reviewed by Mihaela Precup
After Identity: Mennonite Writing in North America, by Robert Zacharias
Reviewed by Jesse Hutchison 389
The Rise of the Memoir, by Alex Zwerdling
Reviewed by Marianne Hirsch 393
Contributors 396
IABA-L: A LIST FOR LIFE WRITING
International Auto/Biography Association
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/
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Last updated: 13 October 2017
