Lives & Letters Mailing: December 2019
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to another Lives & Letters Mailing. This month’s mailing contains information about:
1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project BUMPER News
– Five new Traces!
– … and Five new Blog posts too!
2. The Journal of Epistolary Studies Issue 1 is now Online
3. IJSQ Volume 9, Issue 1
4. History in Africa Call for Papers: Digital Humanities and the Future of Chronicling the African Past
5. CFP: Epistolary Forms in Film, Media and Visual Culture. (1/10/2020 for abstracts) Edited Collection
6. Oral History and the Media (12/20/2019; 7/3-4/2020) OHS Annual Conference, Bournemouth University
7. Call for Papers: “Mapping Black Women’s Lives” Special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 36.2 Spring 2021 (1/15/2020)
8. Call for Papers: Epistolary Forms in Film, Media and Visual Culture, Edited by Catherine Fowler and Teri Higgins (1/10/2020)
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1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
There are a lot of new items of project news, so read on:
We have 5 new traces to share!
New Trace: Draft Treaty of Vereeniging clauses, May 1902
This trace analyses some of the draft clauses of the treaty discussed by Boer delegates at the peace conference held in May 1902, and which resulted in the Treaty of Vereeniging. Looking at the draft Vereeniging clauses now is a disturbing business. Things might have been different, even significantly so, had Smuts and Hertzog and their pens not been at work. To read more about this trace, please follow this link: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/treaty/
New Trace: ‘An admixture of Native blood’, 22 February 1933
This trace analyses in detail a letter written by lawyer CR Prance to a friend and former law practice colleague, George Findlay, with a transcript of the entire letter provided. It was written in early 1933, after Prance had removed from Pretoria, initially to King William’s Town and then to Port St Johns. His letter was written in a wider context of political changes occurring at a national level indicative of the rise of nationalism and the ways this was impacting on governance structures in Pretoria. Broadly, this was a process of ‘Afrikanerisation’ and it occasioned a vituperative response from Prance. To read more, please visit the Trace: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/admixture/
New Trace: ‘Natives’ Land Act, 1913
This trace concerns the ‘Natives Land Act’, which was passed in June 1913 and is frequently described as the originating and definitional legislation in establishing the apparatus of segregation and apartheid and disappropriating South Africa’s black populations from land possession and ownership. To read more about this landmark legislation, please go to: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/land-act/
New Trace: ‘I tak up my pen’, 8 December 1830
This trace analyses a letter from Joseph Hemming to his older brother John Hemming. Joseph was in Canada and John in Ireland, and Joseph was trying to persuade him to emigrate there. In the event John emigrated to South Africa. The letter shows some of the details of migration and its impact at interpersonal level and also tells of settler colonialism from the ground up. To read a full transcript of the letter and the detailed analysis, please visit: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/pen/
New Trace: Hear the trace, 15 December 1915
This trace discusses a diary entry written by Kate Forbes on 15 December 1915, the day her son Jim Forbes married Olive Mathews in Johannesburg. After the wedding, Kate Forbes and other wedding guests saw a play called, ‘Peg o’ my heart’, which ran on Broadway in New York from 1912 to 1914 and was an enormous world-wide success. To read a transcript of the diary entry, listen to a recording from the play, and consider the difference that hearing sound makes to how the past is understood, please visit the trace: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/hear/
There are also 5 new blog posts to share!
From the Blog: Bits and pieces aka varia
The ‘Varia’ or miscellaneous box or boxes at the end of most archive collections in South Africa can be very thought-provoking. These tend to hold the detritus that doesn’t fit anywhere else, and were like this originally rather than being the creation of archivists. To read more about this, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/varia/
From the Blog: Xenophobia or racism? Migrants in South Africa
In recent South African news has been the round up and arrest of many migrants camping out around St George’s Mall in Cape Town while attending the building that houses the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. For more on this alarming development, read the blog at: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/xenophobia-or-racism/
From the Blog: Waiting
The mindset or worldview of whites in South Africa in the period before 1994 is frequently summarised around the word ‘waiting’. This has formed a theme, not surprisingly, in much writing about South Africa. It also gives rise to an interesting question – why didn’t the large black majority rise up against the oppressor white people and slaughter them in the way that the ‘waiting’ idea fears and anticipates? To read more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/waiting/
From the Blog: A response, a reply and turn-taking
Not all letters require a reply and turn-taking, in spite of the orthodoxy that says this is one of the definitional features of letters as a genre. This is not a problem with the definition, it’s due to the complexity of the letter and linked to the plasticity of the form, which shades into other genres and other genres shade in to it. To read more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/response-reply-turn-taking/
From the Blog: The type of Boer
This blog post provides an analysis of how race, ethnicity and misogyny are interconnected in a February 1933 letter by C R Prance. It is one of thousands of letters in the Findlay Family Collection, and it suggests that intersectional thinking can provide a useful basis for analysing prejudice and hatred. To read the analysis of race, ethnicity and misogyny, visit the blog at: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/type-of-boer/
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2. The Journal of Epistolary Studies Issue 1 is now Online
The Journal of Epistolary Studies has just published its first issue. I invite you to visit the website at https://journals.tdl.org/jes/index.php/jes to view it. I hope everyone will also consider contributing to a future issue!
Best,
Gary Schneider, Editor
Editor, JES
*
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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3. IJSQ Volume 9, Issue 1
Dear Colleague,
A new issue of The International Journal of Social Quality has published!
Published in partnership with the International Association on Social Quality and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Please visit the Berghahn website for more information about the journal: www.berghahnjournals.com/ijsq
Volume 9, Issue 1
Editorial
Laurent J. G. van der Maesen
http://bit.ly/2XL0Jsf
Articles
The Contribution of BRICS to the Quality of Global Development
Marco Ricceri
http://bit.ly/2pTasAu
Social Quality in a Transitive Society: The Role of the State
Valeriy Heyets
http://bit.ly/37DTVRI
Public Evaluation of Society in China: The Social Quality Approach
Ren Liying and Zou Yuchin
http://bit.ly/37DU07Y
Social Quality Measurement and Perceived Social Quality: The Case of Peshawar, Pakistan
Muhammad Yasir Ali and Ka Lin
http://bit.ly/2KU1utQ
Sign up for email updates: http://bit.ly/2YJ3jOX
Please visit the Berghahn website for more information about the journal: www.berghahnjournals.com/ijsq
Be sure to recommend IJSQ to your institution’s library: http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/ijsq/library-recommendations/
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4. History in Africa Call for Papers: Digital Humanities and the Future of Chronicling the African Past
CALL FOR PAPERS:
DIGITAL HUMANITIES AND THE FUTURE OF CHRONICLING THE AFRICAN PAST
The incoming editors of History in Africa are inaugurating thematic issues as part of a new feature highlighting how Africanists are engaging with key trends in history and methods.
For our initial themed volume, History in Africa is seeking contributions on the intersection of the study of Africa and the burgeoning field of Digital Humanities. This open call will serve as a bridge to the special section on “Digital History in African Studies” featuring articles on digitizing archives and teaching in the 2020 volume of History in Africa.
Digital Humanities may be understood broadly as the use of computing technologies to examine and analyze history, culture, and the arts. However, scholars and activists have debated that definition and the politics of using Digital Humanities for digital archives, websites, on-line exhibits, published research, and teaching. As Digital Humanities Centers and projects have proliferated, scholars also have raised questions about how race, diversity, and inclusivity relate to the shaping, practice, and funding of this new field. Thus, we are interested in how Digital Humanities in African history affects methodological approaches, historiography, and public engagement with history.
In terms of historiography, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database which began as a CD-Rom in 1999 and became the Slave Voyages on-line resource in 2009, is an example of an innovative connection between history and technology which set off a long-standing debate in African history. Africanists have critiqued aspects of the approach of this project while recognizing that it has been fundamental to the study of the Atlantic slave trade. For example, in a recent volume of History in Africa, a team of researchers proposed new regional names that reflect the topography of the continent rather than European definitions of place. While the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database was groundbreaking, a generation of scholars is engaging with new technologies as a given rather than an optional extra, and this practice is transforming the field. Recent conferences which have attracted diverse and interdisciplinary groups of scholars have examined the threat of marginalization and expropriation of African Studies resources in the digital age (Michigan State University, 2014); have recognized digital projects centering black humanity (College of William & Mary, 2017 and University of Maryland, 2018); and have fostered collaboration with African scholars and researchers based on the continent (Lorentz Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, 2019).
We invite contributions that address African history and the Digital Humanities in relation to methods, source analysis, historiographical debate, audiences, and tools. We also will accept proposals for a new section on “Interview with an Archivist” as an update to our section on “Archival Reports.”
As always, submissions that fall outside of the scope of the theme of Digital Humanities are welcome.
Possible topics related to our Digital Humanities theme include:
- Politics of digitizing archives
- The creation of new public histories
- Technology and the transformation of the profession
- Bridging African and African diaspora history (of particular interest are projects that move beyond slavery and the slave trade)
- Developing new modes and tools for research and writing
- Public engagement with African history in the age of social media
- Digitally chronicling the local
- Challenges of Digital Humanities in African institutions
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS
Please submit a 500 word abstract and a 2-page CV to managingeditor@historyinafrica.org by December 15, 2019. By January 15th, authors will be notified whether to submit a full article for peer review by April 1, 2020. Please note that invitations to submit articles for peer review do not guarantee publication.
Articles selected for publication after peer review will be included in the 2021 volume of History in Africa. Articles may appear in advance of the publication date via FirstView once the copy editing process is completed. Any queries should be addressed to managingeditor@historyinafrica.org.
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5. CFP: Epistolary Forms in Film, Media and Visual Culture. (1/10/2020 for abstracts) Edited Collection
Call for Papers:
Epistolary Forms in Film, Media and Visual Culture
Edited by Catherine Fowler and Teri Higgins
“We are living in a great epistolary age, even if no one much acknowledges it. Our phones, by obviating phoning, have reestablished the omnipresence of text. Think of the sheer profusion of messages … that we now send. “(Sally Rooney, 2019)
As Irish novelist Sally Rooney observes, despite the frequent assumption that technological advances provide constantly new forms of communication, these new forms: the email, the blog, the text message, the tweet, the update are actually haunted by old ‘epistolary’ forms: the letter and the diary. Both the letter and the diary have strong historical relationships to privacy, secrecy and intimacy, as well as to anonymity masquerade and deception, all notions that are both prevalent and highly contested in our current age. By focusing on the connection between a wide-range of media and these epistolary forms our aim is to consider their continuing significance for the mediation of self-expression and the building of relationships.
On the one hand, in mainstream cinema epistolary forms appear to produce storytelling that focuses on emotion rather than action, as such, they challenge the superficiality of post-feminist narratives centered on consumption and continue the melodramatic tradition, specifically the protagonist’s “desire to express all… [and] give voice to their deepest feelings” (Brooks, 1991) (See You’ve Got Mail [1998], Bridget Jones’s Diary [2001], Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants [2005], The Lake House [2006] P.S I Love You [2007], The Young Victoria [2009], Julie and Julia [2009], and most recently, I Love Dick [2016], Love, Simon [2018], and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before [2018]). Several films also ask us to consider emotional masculinity; specifically the relationship between men, vulnerability, and letter writing ([Dear, John (2010], and Love, Simon 2018], and Charlie in The Perks of Being a Wallflower 2012]). On the other hand, we find masquerade and deceit as the counter to intimacy and emotional expression. These themes are increasingly prevalent as epistolary forms move online (A Cinderella Story [2004] as a digital take on a classic, Sierra Burgess Is a Big Loser, [2018], as the most recent re-telling of Cyrano de Bergerac, and in the omniscient narration of Gossip Girl [2007-2012]).
In less mainstream film and media letters, diaries, emails, and blogs have provided ways to play with the space of the personal and auto-biographical, providing intersections with the Essay Film genre. In this space epistolary forms offer genres of self-expression that adopt intimate, emotional, confessional tones; in contrast to the essayistic they are often characterised by a lack of reflection, as writers are too close to experiences, unable to make sense of them, writing them in the moment and/or caught up in the quotidian detail. Hamid Naficy finds epistolary forms particularly prevalent for expressions of exile ‘driven by distance, separation, absence and loss’ (Naficy, 1992: 101), (for example, Mona Hatoum’s Measures of Distance [1988] and Fernando Solanos Tangos: Exile of Gardel [1985]). Naficy’s words fit Indigenous collectives: the Chiapas media project (for Zapista communities in Mexico) who have created politicised videos that use ‘letters, interviews and testimonials’ (Davis et al, 2015: 54) and independents from Chantal Akerman and Jonas Mekas to Abbas Kiarostami (with Victor Erice).
Beyond cinema, in the art world and on other media, it is the themes of intimacy, privacy self-expression and masquerade raised by letters and diaries that we find most frequently addressed. Artist Hito Steyerl, writing about online scamming letters, has gone so far as to argue that: ‘[t]he strongest affective address of the digital happens in the epistolary mode. As a brush with words divorced from actual bodies.’(58) Meanwhile visual artists including Sophie Calle and Miranda July have created subversive melodramas from their use of letters and diaries.
The goal of this proposed collection is to embark on a deep engagement with epistolary forms and their presence in culture and on screen. We look forward to hearing from contributors working on all aspects of film, media and visual studies who share an interest in the many connections between the audio-visual and epistolary forms. Contributors may choose to focus on a specific film or media text or pursue an analysis that draws from a range of examples. As ‘epistolary forms’ we include letters, diaries, emails, blogs, texts, tweets and online social media.
Proposals may consider (but should not be limited to) the following themes and issues:
- Histories of epistolary forms in film and media
- Re-defining self-expression on screen
- Implications for contemporary representations of intimacy
- Relationships with gender & sexuality, especially masculinity
- Intersectionality and epistolary forms
- Centrality to cultures of confession,
- Re-inventions of emotionality
- Extending notions of masquerade
- Relationships with genres (melodrama, romantic comedy, exile cinema, essay film)
- World Cinema/race, ethnicity, the inter-cultural
- Relation to other media forms (television; video games; social media)
- The letter in the digital age (social media; scams)
- Instagram and other social media platforms as diaristic forms
Proposals of up to 350 words, along with a short bio should be sent to the editors: Catherine.fowler@otago.ac.nz and theterihiggins@gmail.com by January 10th 2020. Final chapters will be due January 2021. Details regarding publication (publisher and timeline) will be sent when proposals are accepted.
References
Brooks, Peter. “The Melodramatic Imagination.” Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film and Television Melodrama. Ed. Marcia Landy. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. 50-68.
Davis, Glyn, Kay Dickinson, Lisa Patti and Amy Villarejo. Film Studies – A Global Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2015.
Naficy, Hamid. An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/07/sally-rooney-gets-in-your-head
Steyerl, Hito. “Epistolary Affect and Romance Scams: Letter from an Unknown Woman.” October, Vol. 138, (Fall 2011), pp. 57-69.
Contact Info: Associate Professor Catherine Fowler, University of Otago and Dr Teri Higgins, Independent Researcher, Montreal.
Contact Email: Catherine.fowler@otago.ac.nz
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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6. Oral History and the Media (12/20/2019; 7/3-4/2020) OHS Annual Conference, Bournemouth University
Oral History and the Media
OHS Annual Conference 2020
Bournemouth University
Friday 3rd and Saturday 4th July 2020
Oral history and the media have an important but complex relationship. The media has long been a significant producer of, and outlet for, oral history. Classic radio and television productions like The Radio Ballads (1958-1964), Yesterday’s Witness (1969-1981), and The World at War (1973-4) pioneered the use of oral history in the media, giving voice to those who would otherwise have been excluded from both the media and the historical record. Since the 1980s, there has been growing use of oral history in TV and radio documentaries and storytelling, with oral histories now forming an important and popular dimension of history and factual programming and broadcasting. However, the methodological, aesthetic, narrative, and ethical decisions behind these productions – such as who to interview, what questions to ask, and what parts of the interviews end up on the “cutting room floor” – often remain hidden.
The relationship between oral history and the media can also be seen in how oral history has been used to explore the histories and experiences of the media itself, with oral history projects charting the development of media companies and organisation. This has coincided with an upsurge of interest in memory and nostalgia related to the experiences of media, such as memories of cinema, books and music.
Elsewhere, the advent of new media and social media has fuelled the growth of digital storytelling, interactive documentaries, as well as serialised audio podcasts which draw heavily on oral history testimony. Whilst these new technologies, formats and channels offer new ways of creating, disseminating and consuming oral history, they also raise vital questions about ethics, participation, expertise, audiences, and formats in oral history practice.
This conference aims to consider the relationship between oral history and the media, both historically and today, by exploring similarities, differences, opportunities and challenges between media practices and oral history practices, from interviewing to editing, audiences to ethics, covering topics such as:
- The Use and Misuse of Oral History in the Media
- Memories of (the) Media: Film, Books, TV, Radio, Theatre, Music.
- The Influence of the Media on Memory: Mediated Memory and Prosthetic Memory
- Oral History, Media and Editing: Soundbites, Vox-Pops and the ‘Cutting-Room Floor’
- Oral History, Media and Interviewing: Intersubjectivity, Questions, and Emotion
- Journalism, Crisis Oral History and Historical Distance
- Oral Histories of the Media (professions, organisations and companies)
- New Media, Social Media and Oral History
- Changing Media and Formats and its implications for Oral History
- Archiving, Preservation and Re-use of Oral Histories in the Media
PROPOSALS
The deadline for submission of proposals is 20th December 2019. Each proposal should include: a title, an abstract of between 250-300 words, your name (and the names of any copresenters, panellists, etc), your institution or organisation, your email address, and a note of any particular requirements. Most importantly your abstract should demonstrate the use of oral history or personal testimony and be directly related to the conference theme. Proposals that include audio playback are strongly encouraged. Proposals should be emailed to the ORAL HISTORY AND THE MEDIA Conference Manager, Polly Owen, at polly.owen@ohs.org.uk. They will be assessed anonymously by the conference organisers, and presenters will be contacted in January/February 2020
www.ohs.org.uk/conferences/conference-2020/
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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7. Call for Papers: “Mapping Black Women’s Lives” Special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 36.2 Spring 2021 (1/15/2020)
Call for Papers: “Mapping Black Women’s Lives”
Special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies
36.2 Spring 2021
www.tandfonline.com/raut
Submissions Deadline: January 15, 2020
For this special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, we seek papers that employ diverse and/or interdisciplinary methodologies to recover and situate (geographically and theoretically) Black female lives throughout the African diaspora. How do we write with and against archival silences and violences? What role does digitization play in making visible or further marginalizing Black women’s life writing? We are particularly interested in scholarly efforts that redefine, transform, or reform the spaces and places in which Black women’s cultural contributions were recorded (or not). Where and how do we map the lives of Black women? Topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Cartography, maps, mapping, and journeys in Black women’s life narrative
- Forced displacements
- Dangerous moves
- Middle passages as trans-historical consciousness
- Relationships between faith systems, movement and racialized geographies
- Examining Diaspora through Life Writing
- Travel to and through archives
- How geography shapes who and what we recover
- Global perspectives on mapping Black women’s lives
- Methodologies for locating and mapping Black women’s lives
- Pedagogical approaches to mapping Black women’s lives and/or reading journeys in Black women’s life narratives
- Autotheoretical approaches to mapping and/or studying Black women’s lives in transit
Send original articles of 6000-7000 words (including works cited and notes), including keywords, an abstract, and a brief biographical statement to Kimberly Blockett (kdb13@psu.edu). We welcome essays that include images and are able to print in color without author fees. a/b also publishes ancillary digital and multimedia texts on the journal’s Routledge website. Inquiries welcome.
All essays must follow the format of Chicago Manuel of Style (17th edition). Essays submitted for the special issue, but not selected, may be considered general submissions and may be selected for publication. In order to ensure a confidential peer review, remove any identifying information, including citations that refer to you as the author in the first person. Cite previous publications, etc. with your last name to preserve your anonymity in the reading process. Include your name, address, email, the title of your essay, and your affiliation in a cover letter or cover sheet for your essay. It is the author’s responsibility to secure any necessary copyright permissions and essays may not progress into the publication stage without written proof of right to reprint. Images with captions must be submitted in a separate file as 300 dpi (or higher) tiff files with captions. Please indicate placement of images in the text.
Guest Editor, Kimberly Blockett, Associate Professor of English at Penn State Brandywine, is a C19 literary historian. She uses archives and cultural geography to examine black female movement and subjectivity. Blockett’s publications include MELUS, Legacy, MLA Approaches to Teaching Hurston, and the Cambridge History of African American Literature. The archival work for her forthcoming monograph and annotated edition of Zilpha Elaw’s Memoirs was funded by fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Smithsonian, NEH, and Harvard Divinity School.
…
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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Last updated: 6 December 2019
