Lives & Letters Mailing: September 2018 | Whites Writing Whiteness

Lives & Letters Mailing: September 2018

Dear Colleagues,

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

1.Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
– Hot off the Press: A new article by Liz Stanley
– From the blog: Joseph Hemming to his brother John, 1830 – A page-by-page analysis from the Schreiner-Hemming Collection
– From the blog: Pronouns
– From the blog: Drawing the line
2. Call for Papers: ‘Auto/biography: Past and Present Lives’. BSA Auto/Biography Study Group 2018 Christmas Conference (9/30/2018; 12/7/2018) London, UK
3. International Conference on Narrative (1/15/2019; 6/6-8/2019) Pamplona, Spain
4. The Diary as Literature Through the Lens of Multiculturalism in America 3/21-24/2019 Washington DC NEMLA
5. Inaugural Lecture by Edinburgh University’s first Professor of Black Studies
6. Festschrift for Philippe Lejeune–the European Journal of Life Writing 7 (2018)
7.2019 ISRF Essay Competition – Interdisciplinarity: The New Orthodoxy?

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1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News

There are four new items of project news we would like to share:

Hot off the Press: A new article by Liz Stanley
‘Before: The avant-textes of “From Man to Man” and Olive Schreiner’s writing practices’

Available via OnlineFirst from the Journal of Commonwealth Literature
https://doi.org/10.1177/0021989418787843

Abstract:
The “warts and all” transcriptions of two early Olive Schreiner draft manuscripts of parts of what was later published as From Man to Man are examined in detail. They are analysed by treating them as avant-textes and using a genetic criticism approach. Doing so, different aspects of her writing practices come into view around the distinction she made between her “ordinary writing”, which encompassed “in the moment” additions, deletions, and amendments, and what she described as “overworking”, the after the event activities usually termed editing. Although coexisting on the manuscript pages, these are distinct sets of practices exerting different pressures. Some problems of emplotment and narrative continuity arose through attempting to combine both, and the possibility that the novel had a different narrative structure is explored.

From the blog: Joseph Hemming to his brother John, 1830 – A page-by-page analysis from the Schreiner-Hemming Collection
A detailed analysis examining the four pages of the letter, including transcriptions. John Hemming was a Bombardier in the 5th Battalion of the Royal Artillery who later took up a prestigious position as a tax collector working for the Colonial Secretary in Cape Town. He became the patriarch of the Hemming family in South Africa, with later his son Robert Hemming marrying Alice Schreiner, an elder sister of the writer and social commentator Olive Schreiner. To read the page-by-page analysis of this letter, please visit the blog via the following links:

Page 1: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/i-tak-up-my-pen/
Page 2: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/concerning-my-hown-affairs/
Page 3: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/now-more-about-that-now/
Page 4: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/bombardier-john-i-hemming/

From the blog: Pronouns
We have been doing a lot of work on the 1871 David Forbes diary and the 1871 letters. We have been deeply engrossed in the use of pronouns in the diary and letters, comparing these two different genres of writing, and also comparing the different letter-writers. Why? As well as being interested in these two different genres of writing, diaries and letters and how pronouns position people in them, more generally the use of pronouns points up relational factors and the shape of figurational associations.

To read more, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/pronouns/

From the blog: Drawing the line
Where should the line be drawn between comments that are offensive, and comments that are not only racial but racist? Certainly if such things are placed on a spectrum with at one end physical violence and genocides, ‘the line’ drawn might seem rather different. But these are difficult, troubled considerations. Thinking about an entry in the 1871 David Forbes diary may help analysing this. To read more and view a partial transcription of the diary entry, please visit the blog: http://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/drawing-the-line/

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2. Call for Papers: ‘Auto/biography: Past and Present Lives’. BSA Auto/Biography Study Group 2018 Christmas Conference (9/30/2018; 12/7/2018) London, UK

BSA Auto/Biography Study Group 2018 Christmas Conference: Call for papers

Dear Friend

We are very pleased to announce that we will be holding our next Christmas one-day Conference at Friends House, Euston Road, London NW1 2BJ (opposite Euston Station) on the 7^th December 2018.

The conference theme is ‘Auto/biography: Past and Present Lives’. We are pleased to say that our keynote speaker will be Josie Abbott.

This is the call for papers – please supply titles and brief abstracts (max 250 words) and send to me at anne.chappell@brunel.ac.uk as a Word attachment or in the body of an email by 30^th September. As well as completed contributions, “work in progress” is most welcome.

Information about registering for the conference will come out to you in early October. Costs will be between £90 and £110 depending on payment category and include lunch and refreshments. Non-paper givers are very welcome. Places go quickly as there is a limitation on numbers so an early response is recommended.

I look forward to receiving your abstracts. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any queries.

Best wishes

Anne

BSA Auto/Biography Study Group Annual Summer Residential Conference at Wolfson College, Oxford 20^th to 22^nd July 2019:

The Topic is Auto/Biography and Childhood.
Our Keynote speaker is Prof Andrew Sparkes.
Michael Erben is now accepting titles and 250 abstracts (michaelerben@gmail.com)

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3. International Conference on Narrative (1/15/2019; 6/6-8/2019) Pamplona, Spain

The call for papers is now open for next year’s International Conference on Narrative, held at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, 6-8 June 2019. The conference coincides with the IABA Europe Conference in Madrid. Hopefully many scholars will attend both!

Here are all the details:

We welcome proposals for papers and panels on all aspects of narrative in any genre, period, discipline, language, and medium.

Deadline for receipt of proposals: 15 January, 2019

Proposals for Individual Papers
Please provide the title and a 300-word abstract of the paper you are proposing; your name, institutional affiliation, and email address; and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about your work and your publications.

Proposals for Panels
Please provide a 700-word (maximum) description of the topic of the panel and of each panelist’s contribution; the title of the panel and the titles of the individual papers; and for each participant the name, institutional affiliation, email address, and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) about the person’s work and publications.

Please send proposals by email in PDF or Word to: narrative2019@gmail.com

All participants must join the International Society for the Study of Narrative. For more information on the ISSN, please visit: narrative.georgetown.edu

The conference will be held at the University of Navarra, Pamplona (Spain) from June 6-8, 2019.

Plenaries will be given by Professor Rebecca Garden

And Professor Julie Rak.

Conference organizers:
Professor Rocío G. Davis (rgdavis@unav.es)
Professor Rosalía Baena (rbaena@unav.es)
Professor Anabel Martínez (abmartinezg@unav.es)
Department of Philology
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
University of Navarra
31009 Pamplona, Spain

For more details, see here.

Craig Howes, list manager
craighow@hawaii.edu, biograph@hawaii.edu
Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
On Facebook: facebook.com/CBRHawaii

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4. The Diary as Literature Through the Lens of Multiculturalism in America 3/21-24/2019 Washington DC NEMLA

The Diary as Literature Through the Lens of Multiculturalism in America

Seeking abstracts for a roundtable discussion at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) to be held March 21 -24, 2019 in Washington DC

The deadline for abstract proposals is September 30, 2018.

A diary is a serious thing; not to be undertaken lightly or to be spoken of in anything but a whisper. If kept in the right spirit, it means a record of things both seen and unseen, all recorded in strictly conscientious fashion? It means, too, that one must crystallize one’s secret thoughts and longings and desires into written words, thereby giving speech to hitherto inarticulaye [sic] voices.

Alice Dunbar-Nelson, “Confessions of a Lazy Woman”

This roundtable focuses on diary writing as a quasi-literary genre that includes autobiography, biography, memoir, correspondence, travel literature, and more. We will examine the diarist’s text because it speaks the truth of the appearance of things. The diarist’s account is imaginative writing, social and political history. Diary writing includes events that add up to a story with meaning, a theme, and style. Diary writing is creating “real” fictions of one’s self. For the diarist, the diary becomes a transnational space in which an intersection of cultures, languages, and peoples help the diarist understand self and the world they live in.

Joan Didion says in her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” that writing in a notebook gets us “closer to the truth” about “how it felt to me” and to remember what it was to be.”

Through the lens of the diary, this roundtable will discuss how diarists, writers, and poets reflect on multiculturalism and intercultural relations. Subjects and themes include identity, language, race, class, culture, gender, religion, sexuality, and nationality of American minorities who use the diary to help them find their own expressive language, explore their identity, and understand themselves, their intimate relationships, and the world around them. Since the diary is an autobiographical text the roundtable includes the study of autobiography, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

For bell hooks, “autobiographical writing was a way for her to evoke the particular experience of growing up southern and black in segregated communities. It was a way to recapture the richness of southern black culture. The need to remember and hold to the legacy of that experience…”

Topics include:

Socioeconomic and political matters in which the diarist lives in companionship with others or in a community, rather than in isolation?
Diaries that give voice to the identity of the diarist or illustrate a hidden identity.
The diary as a confessional through the lens of Foucault: confessions turn both on what can be openly spoken about and what is forbidden to name.
Diary writing that reflects the shadow self; the women’s voice is unique, different from another woman’s voice and does not conform to the images society creates for them; “a necessary stage in the psychic journey leading to recovery and the restoration of well-being.”
Cultural authenticity in fictional diaries such as Maya’s Notebook, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and The Golden Notebook
The role of the diary as autobiography, a writer’s workshop, a companion, and as a creative space
Reading other people’s diaries that have passed from “hand to hand, generation to generation” because the content and purpose are based on terrible urgency or fragments of a life.
Silence in the diary that causes a discrepancy between diary entries and the diarist’s actual life, and when the diarist is incapable of giving a complete picture of what she has gone through.
The pages of diaries, journals, and notebooks that illustrate the strength, the resilience, and the resourcefulness of the American black male and female voices including their struggles and their constraints, and their victories and their joys.
What is private and what is public when it comes to publishing a found diary?
The legacy of diary keeping in families.

Contact Info:

Angela Hooks
Contact Email: angelarhooks@gmail.com
URL: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/17624

Craig Howes, list manager
craighow@hawaii.edu, biograph@hawaii.edu
Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
On Facebook: facebook.com/CBRHawaii

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5. Inaugural Lecture by Edinburgh University’s first Professor of Black Studies

The inaugural lecture by Edinburgh University’s first Professor of Black Studies, Celeste-Marie Bernier, will be given at 6 pm on Friday 5 October in the Playfair Library Hall, University of Edinburgh. Her topic is

Suffering, Struggle, Survival: 200 Years of African Atlantic Art and Authorship (1818-2018)

The lecture is open to all. Admission is free but ticketed via Eventbrite at

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/inaugural-lectures-celeste-marie-bernier-tickets-41205881902

Edinburgh University Press and the Edinburgh International Book Festival have just launched Celeste’s and Andrew Taylor’s book If I Survive: Frederick Douglass and Family in the Walter O Evans Collection.

See https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-if-i-survive.html

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6. Festschrift for Philippe Lejeune–the European Journal of Life Writing 7 (2018)

On August 13^th, Philippe le Jeune has turned eighty. A Festschrift, published in the European Journal of Life Writing honours the work Philippe Lejeune has done over a long and highly productive career as a scholar and promoter of life writing in all its forms, and the impact of this work on fellow scholars in the International Auto/biography Association—both its European chapter and more widely. It also celebrates Philippe the man—a colleague whose energy, inventiveness and warmth are repeatedly highlighted in the essays published in the EJLW

Vol 7 (2018): European Journal of Life Writing

http://ejlw.eu/

Table of Contents

Cher Philippe. A Festschrift for Philippe Lejeune

Contents

Contents Contents

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