Lives & Letters Mailing: January 2020
Dear Colleagues,
Happy New Year, and Welcome to another Lives & Letters Mailing. This month’s mailing contains information about:
1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
– New Trace: De Beers compound c1886
– New Trace: Contract of hiring and service, 20 Sept 1845
– New Trace: Sweetest of young persons, 24 March 1907
– New Curiosity: When is an author?
– From the Blog: Race and class, class and race
2. Call for Articles: Travel Narratives and Real-Life Fiction, The Lincoln Humanities Journal (6/15/2020)
3. Social Research Methods Courses @SurreySociology 2020
4. CFP for Special Issue about African American Biofictionfor African American Review (8/15/2020)
5. CFP “Un/Bound”Special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 36.3 Autumn 2021 (2/1/2020
6. Newsletter for the Biography Institute, January 2020
7. Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies Contents of No. 13, Autumn 2019 Center for Life Writing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
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1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
There are five items of project news to report on – there are some important new documents and analyses to draw attention to!
New Trace: De Beers compound c1886
The compound is one of the quintessential features of the material organisation of labour in South Africa and has been since the mid-nineteenth century and discoveries of diamonds followed by gold. What does the compound system tell about whiteness in the South African context? Much attention is given to segregation policies and practices occurring post-1910 and the Union of South Africa. These are obviously crucial; but it is also important to recognise the antecedents upon which such things were built, the thinking and practices which informed structures of perception and possibility and policy. The compounds are one of the essences of segregation, along with passes and labour contracts, with those who lived in them treated entirely as engines of labour and separated from anything not part of the labour process. To read more about this and see what the first ones looked like, please visit the Trace: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/de-beers-compound-1886/
New Trace: Contract of hiring and service, 20 Sept 1845
This trace concerns a document dated 20 Sept 1845. It is a contract of ‘hiring and service’ made between Tepa, described as a Tambookie, and an Eastern Cape farmer, William Dods Pringle (known as Dods). It provides the governing framework for them entering into a contract under the terms of Ordinance 49, a piece of Cape Colony legislation which had been passed in 1828 together with Ordinance 50. To see the document, and read more about it, please visit the Trace: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/contract-sept-1845/
New Trace: Sweetest of young persons, 24 March 1907
This trace analyses a letter by Olive Schreiner written to a favourite niece, and provides accompanying footnotes giving information about people and circumstances relevant to comprehending it as well as the detailed analysis. On one level the letter is rather inconsequential, as a snapshot of what reads like an ordinary family scene, but it signifies much more. To read the letter and find out more about it, please visit the Trace: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/traces/sweetest/
New Curiosity: When is an author?
When is a book by someone, by an author, by its author? In the case of Nelson Mandela, a number of books bear his name as author but the contents have actually been compiled by other people. Yes, his words as present in letters, notes, speeches and interviews have certainly been used. But no, the act of authorship which produced the product that is the book that these are in was not his, but that of some other person or persons. To read more about this and its relevance to analysing collections of letters, please visit the Curiosity: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/curiosities/when-is-an-author/
From the Blog: Race and class, class and race
Want a really good read about post-1994 identity complications in South Africa? Look no further! A book by Newman and De Lannoy (2014) is excellent. To read more about it, please visit the Blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/race-and-class/
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2. Call for Articles: Travel Narratives and Real-Life Fiction, The Lincoln Humanities Journal (6/15/2020)
The Lincoln Humanities Journal (ISSN 2474-7726) is requesting article submissions for its 8th special issue, to be published in December 2020, on the topic of Travel Narratives and Real-Life Fiction. Contributors are invited to examine specifically (a) the evolving forms of life-writings (biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, blogs, etc.) as they pertain to travel; (b) the intersection of fictional and factual travel narratives, and (c) the emotional, economic, socio-political, environmental, physiological, and literary aspects of travel (in reality and in fiction; by land, sea and air; on earth and in outer space). We welcome approaches across a broad range of disciplines such as literature, history, political science, anthropology, religion, popular culture, philosophy, visual arts, and social media. Topics may include but are not limited to:
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- The concept of travel: historical and philosophical perspectives
- Travel writing, Life-writing as genre
- Biofiction, biography, autobiography
- Travel journalism
- Travel in film, theater, literature, and television
- The Internet of places: Pictures and videos of other places, cultures, etc.
- Modern tourism
- Adventure and exploration
- Travel for business, pleasure, family reunion, aid work
- Travel for education (study abroad, etc.)
- Pilgrimage & religious travel
- Modes of transportation
- Environmental impact of travel
- Travel to the moon and beyond; The sci-fi connection and influence
- Tourism in international relations (migration, spying, etc.)
- Temporary living and/or working abroad (mission, etc.)
Submission & Review Process
- Manuscripts should be sent to the editor, Abbes Maazaoui (maazaoui@lincoln.edu)
- Articles undergo a double blind review and their publication depends on the peer-review process.
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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3. Social Research Methods Courses @SurreySociology 2020
The Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey has a range of one, two and three day courses in social research methods coming up this year. These are led by expert methodologists working in or affiliated to the department. Click on the links for more information and to book.
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Introduction to NVivo 12 for qualitative and mixed methods analysis, Patsy Clark
http://bit.ly/NVivoIntroJan20
9.45am – 4.15pm, Wednesday 29th January – Thursday 30th January 2020
Audio-visual and textual analysis using Transana, Christina Silver
http://bit.ly/TransanaJan20
9.45am – 4.15pm, Friday 31st January 2020
Agent-based Modelling for the Social Scientist, Corinna Elsenbroich
http://bit.ly/agentmodellingFeb20
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 10 February – Wednesday 12 February 2020
Practical Survey Design and Web-based Methods, Rob Meadows/Patten Smith
http://bit.ly/surveydesignFeb20
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 17 February – Wednesday 19 February 2020
Statistical Modelling in R Ian Brunton-Smith
http://bit.ly/statsmodellingusingR
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 24 February – Wednesday 26 February 2020
Online Social Research, Christine Hine
http://bit.ly/OnlineResearchMarch20
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 2 March – Wednesday 4 March 2020
Introduction to ATLAS.ti for qualitative and mixed-methods analysis, Christina Silver
http://bit.ly/ATLAStiMarch20
9.45am – 4.15pm, Friday 6th March 2020
Discourse Analysis Maria Xenitidou
http://bit.ly/DiscourseAnalysisMarch20
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 9 March – Wednesday 11 March 2020
Multilevel Modelling for Social Scientists Ian Brunton-Smith
http://bit.ly/MultiLevelModellingMarch20
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 16 March – Wednesday 18 March 2020
Participatory Systems Mapping Pete Barbrook-Johnson & Alex Penn
http://bit.ly/SystemsMappingMarch20
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 23 March – Wednesday 25 March 2020
Introduction to NVivo 12 for qualitative and mixed methods analysis Patsy Clark
http://bit.ly/NVivoMarch20
9.45am – 4.15pm, Wednesday 2 – Thursday 30th January 2020
Complex Social Systems Corinna Elsenbroich
http://bit.ly/ComplexSystemsApril20
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 27 April – Wednesday 29 April 2020
MAXQDA Introductory Training Sarah Bulloch
http://bit.ly/MAXQDAApril20
9.45am – 4.15pm, Thursday 30th April – Friday 1st May
Social Network Analysis Giulia Berlusconi
http://bit.ly/SocialNetworkAnalysisMay20
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 4 May – Thursday 6 May 2020
Computer-assisted Qualitative and Mixed Methods Data Analysis: NVivo Christina Silver & Sarah Bulloch
http://bit.ly/HarnessingNVivoMay20
9:00am – 5:00pm, Monday 11 May – Wednesday 13 May 2020
Introduction to ATLAS.ti for qualitative and mixed-methods analysis Sarah Bulloch
http://bit.ly/ATLASMay20
9.45am – 4.15pm, Wednesday 27th May, 2020
Introduction to NVivo 12 for qualitative and mixed methods analysis Sarah Bulloch
http://bit.ly/NVivoJune20
9.45am – 4.15pm, Wednesday 3rd – Thursday 4th June 2020
NVivo Advanced Support Workshop Christina Silver
http://bit.ly/NVivoAdvancedJun20
9.45am – 4.15pm, Friday 5th June, 2020
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4. CFP for Special Issue about African American Biofiction for African American Review (8/15/2020)
CFP for Special Issue about African American Biofiction
for the journal African American Review
Biofiction is literature that names its protagonist after an actual historical figure, and it has become a dominant aesthetic form since the late 1980s, resulting in stellar works from global luminaries as varied like Gabriel García Márquez, J.M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood, Michael Cunningham, Joyce Carol Oates, Mario Vargas Llosa, Peter Carey, Olga Tokarczuk, and Hilary Mantel, just to mention a notable few. Studies about biofiction have surged over the last ten years, but what scholars have not yet noted is the African American contribution to the evolution, rise, and legitimization of biofiction.
There were some important biofictions published in the nineteenth century, such as Herman Melville’s Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (1855), Gustave Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Anthony (1874) and “Herodias” (1877), Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), and Oscar Wilde’s “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” (1889). But the first real boom occurred in the 1930s, with influential publications from authors like Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Irving Stone, and Robert Graves. Worth noting is that Arna Bontemps (Black Thunder) and Zora Neale Hurston (Moses, Man of the Mountain) published two of the more impressive biofictions from the decade.
But it would be two novels about African Americans in the second half of the twentieth century that would contribute significantly to the most important boom in biofiction, which is still underway. In 1967, William Styron published the hugely controversial novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, which won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, while in 1979, Barbara Chase-Riboud published Sally Hemings, a work that sold more than a million copies and led, in part, Eugene A. Foster to carry out DNA testing, which confirmed that Hemings’s descendants are related to Jefferson.
African Americans, either as authors or protagonists, are of crucial importance in some of the most impactful biofictions, including Chase-Riboud’s The President’s Daughter (Jefferson’s daughter Harriet Hemings) and Hottentot Venus (Sarah Baartman), Charles Johnson’s Dreamer (Martin Luther King, Jr.), Louis Edwards’s Oscar Wilde Discovers America, Caryl Phillips’s Dancing in the Dark (Bert Williams), Chika Unigwe’s De Zwarte Messias (Olaudah Equiano), and Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic (Frederick Douglass), just to name a few. It is for this reason that the African American Review is soliciting essays for a special issue about African American biofiction, by which is meant either biofiction by or about African Americans.
We welcome essays about the history of the aesthetic form in relation to African American literature and culture, African American innovations within the form, the role of African Americans within biofiction, studies about individual texts, and the recovery of lost historical figures through biofiction. More speculative essays are also welcome. For instance, we know that Toni Morrison encouraged Chase-Riboud to write Sally Hemings. Given the huge success of that 1979 novel, why did Morrison change the name of her protagonist in Beloved? How would Beloved signify differently had Morrison written it as a biographical novel? How would Sally Hemings function and signify differently had Chase-Riboud changed the protagonist’s name? Such contrastive and comparative studies could illuminate individual novels as well as African American biofiction more generally.
Essays will be due on August 15th, 2021.
For information about this special issue, contact Michael Lackey (lacke010@morris.umn.edu)
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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5. CFP “Un/Bound”Special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 36.3 Autumn 2021 (2/1/2020)
Call for Papers: “Un/Bound”
Special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies
36.3 Autumn 2021
www.tandfonline.com/raut
Submissions Deadline: February 1, 2020
Memoirs and other auto/biographical genres that describe selfhoods at, on, or over borders have long been a subject of scholarly interest but have recently acquired greater urgency. Border crossings and unbindings—the movements of bodies in space inside and across boundaries of all kinds—are at the center not just of the news but also of current discussions in life writing studies.
Since 2016, every volume of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies has included essays or clusters dedicated to lives written in spaces between bounded ground or that exist in crossings between such places. Biography’s recent issue includes Marc Lamont Hill’s “From Ferguson to Palestine: Reimagining Transnational Solidarity Through Difference” as well as Gillian Maris Jones’ “Black Lives Abroad: Encounters of Diasporic Solidarity in Brazil.” Books on the subject, such as Routledge’s After American Studies: Rethinking the Legacies of Transnational Exceptionalism (Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, 2019) and UNC-Chapel Hill’s Migrant Longing: Letter Writing Across the US-Mexico Borderlands (Miroslava Chávez-García, 2018) have proliferated, as have short-form treatments across more than 100 journals in disciplines as disparate as those represented by the Journal of Literacy Research, African and Black Diaspora, and Culture, Medicine, and Psychology.
Textual lives in/of migration are clearly the focus of intensive critical attention currently. As the necessity of migration and its divisive politics intensifies, life writing about lives bound and unbound by movement in and between spaces becomes more valuable in fighting stereotypical projections and in complicating and deepening our understanding of the link between place, movement, and identity.
The guest editors of this special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies seek essays investigating how borders and boundaries function in the telling of life narratives—the sense in which lines and liminality may bind people in place, in which crossing boundaries is definitional in life writing as a genre, and in which crossed boundaries become meaningful in their own creation and in the creation of a life-as-text. This issue seeks to address such life writing from a global perspective, asking us to think about what binds or frees human beings, what constitutes a border or a margin on which a self might be or escape its definition.
Proposed essays may address, but certainly should not be limited to, the following topics:
Border crossing and border enforcement, immigration, and refugee experiences in life narratives
- Life in the borderlands, life in immigrant communities/families
- Depictions and/or constructions of transnational or postcolonial identity, hybridity, international interaction
- Issues of language and dialect
- Effects of changing, shifting, or disputed borders and government policies on individuals and communities
- Concepts of, and responses to, border (in)security
- Narrative forms used to represent borders and borderlands
- Mapping and cultural geographies in borderlands narratives
- Methodologies used to support border research
- Pedagogical approaches to border narratives
- Genre and narrating lives on the move
Send original articles of 6,000-7,000 words (including works cited and notes), including keywords, an abstract, and a brief biographical statement to Helga Lénárt-Cheng (hl4@stmarys-ca.edu) and Megan Brown (megan.brown@drake.edu). The guest editors 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 Manual 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.
This CFP stems from a call for papers originally posted for the 2020 Modern Language Association convention.
Helga Lénárt-Cheng is Associate Professor in World Languages and Cultures and Global and Regional Studies at Saint Mary’s College of California. She is co-author of a book on Alexander Lenard (Wanderer of Worlds, 2016) and of numerous articles. Her research focuses on autobiography, immigration, digital trends in life writing, and theories of subjectivity and community.
Megan Brown is Professor of English at Drake University and the author of two books: American Autobiography After 9/11 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2017) and The Cultural Work of Corporations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Her work has also appeared in Biography, Assay, Women’s Studies Quarterly, College Literature,South Atlantic Quarterly, and Cultural Studies. She teaches courses in memoir and autobiography, personal essay, and American literature.
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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6. Newsletter for the Biography Institute, January 2020
Annual Report Biography Institute
The annual report 2019 of the Biography Institute is available in Dutch and in English.
PhD-ceremony Co Strootman on January 23
Co Strootman will defend his thesis Wie stuit de rebellie van de massa? P.J. Bouman 1902-1977 on January 23, 14.30 hrs in the aula of the academy building. Bouman was a famous professor of sociology at the University of Groningen and also a widely read author of popular science books. In his biography, attention is paid to his fight with science and the cause of his popularity. The book reveals an almost unknown Bouman: the obsessive labour on his project of life and his underlying motives, his simultaneous fight against and service to science. The biography shows Bouman as a self-appointed culture carrier who sometimes took a wrong turn, but above all gained success and fame.
Cover edited volume Different Lives designed
Next Spring, the edited volume Different Lives will be published by Brill. The book will contain the papers that were presented at the conference of the same name, organized by the Biography Institute. The Groningen artist Dolf Verlinden made the design for the cover of the book, which appears in the new series Biography Studies, with Hans Renders as Series Editor.
Jeroen Vullings now working for Elsevier
Vullings, who is writing a biography of the journalist Henk Hofland, now works for the news magazine Elsevier as the reviewer of literary fiction. Jeroen Vullings has been a critic for 23 years at the newspaper Vrij Nederland.
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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7. Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies Contents of No. 13, Autumn 2019 Center for Life Writing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies
No.13, Autumn 2019
Center for Life Writing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Contents
Editor’s Note
Special Section: Interview
An Introduction to the Work of Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson
…………Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson
Text Studies
A Summary of Biographies of “Contemporary Writers” in the 40 Years of Reform and Opening Up……Wei Xue Quan Zhan
Self-Establishment through History——A Comment on Zhang Xinying’sThe First Halfof Shen Congwen’s Life (1902-1948)……Zhang Yang
“Fictional Truth” and the Construction of the Spiritual Image: A Study of Li Changzhi’s Biography
……Li Qiting
The Resistance to Suffering and the Increase of Life Value: On the Autobiographical Works by Disabled Contemporary Writers……Xue Haojie
Nature and Self-identity: A Case Study of The View from Castle Rock……Zhu Yan
Autobiography Studies
Out of the Bamboo Curtain: An Interpretation of the Consciousness of Modern Chinese Women fromDaughter of Confucius: A Personal History……Li Junhao Yin Dexiang
Diary Studies
The Stylistic Changes and the Exploration of Its Connotation in TheSequel of Wu Mi’s Diary
…………Huang Yanwei
Supplementary Studies on the Diary of Liu Kang……Ho Yi Kai
History of Life Writing
The Power of Invention: Anne Hathaway in Shakespeare’s Biographies……Xu Qinchao
A Biography of the Time and an Autobiography of the Soul: A Study on Letters of Madame de Sévigné……Cao Lei
Subject Studies
“The First and Most Lasting Intelligent Model”: On the Influence of Leslie Stephen on Woolf’s Creation……Jiao Hongle
Mark Twain’s Get-Rich-Quick Complex: From “The Tennessee Land” in Autobiography of Mark Twain……Xue Yufeng
Note on an Autobiographical Narrative in Franz Kafka’s Diary……Zhao Shankui
Film Biography
Time Shaping Strategies and Biographee’s Identity Construction of Chinese Film Biography
……Fan Lulu
Life Writing Materials
Zhou Zuoren and the New Literary Education of Yenching University……Liu Ying Tang Zhihui
A Study on Zhou Zuoren’s Visit to Japan in 1934: Taking the Contact with Dojin Association as an Approach……Xu Xiaohong
From the Life Writer
On the Selection of Biographical Subjects and Exploration of Materials: The Presentation at the Life Writing Workshop Hosted at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics
……Han Shishan
Academic Info
Our Commitment to the Cause of Life Writing: A Summary of the Seven-Year Major Project
……Our Editor
The Presentist and Futurist Turns of Life Writing: Review of the PKU-KCL Joint Symposium
……Huang Rong
Instructions to Contributors
From the Editor
From the Editor
This issue features many fresh and interesting topics in 20 papers.
Two U.S. scholars Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson brief on their efforts, through which a snapshot of American autobiographical studies in the recent 40 years is conveyed. What is particularly interesting to us is the eleven new topics of life narrative studies, i.e. autoethnography, automediality, trauma and testimony, empathetic identification and ethics, archives, relationality, self-translation and transnational identifications and identities, trans-writing, eco-autobiographical writing, racialization and ethnic identification, and biofiction in life narrative. Both the exact definitions and the topics require exploration to broaden our horizon and inspire our thinking.
The 40 years since the reform and opening-up have witnessed spectacular achievements in literary biography, of which Wei Xue and Quan Zhan have made a summary. One of Quan’s major achievements to China’s life-writing studies is his comprehensive conclusion of life-writing development from different perspectives and aspects, on the basis of his consistent and painstaking collection, reading and selection of voluminous life-writing works and his compilation, categorization and assessment. In so doing, his efforts facilitate understanding of the general development of contemporary China’s life writing and further researches. This paper sets a good example in the analysis of the background of literary biography popularity and its pros and cons.
To the extent that Zhang Xinying’s Shen Congwen is prominent in recent literary biographies, Zhang Yang’s “Self-Establishment through History” criticizes Zhang’s The First Half of Shen Congwen. Instead of merely focusing on this work, Zhang Yang also provides his understanding of Shen Congwen studies, comparison of different biographies of Shen Congwen and the exploration of biographical writing approaches. Her broad academic interests and active thinking as a young scholar deserve praise.
Li Changzhi is among the most significant Chinese biographers and literary critics in the 20th century, but the research on his biographies is far from mature. As a young MA candidate, Li Qiting reviews his biographies of Sima Qian and Li Bai despite all the challenges. Though there is room for improvement in her analysis and elaboration, her broad perspectives, quick wit and reasonable analysis are commendable.
Life writing features humanistic concern, while life writing of the disabled and patients focuses on this regard and spiritual inspiration. Xue Haojie reveals the theme of “the resistance to suffering and the increase of life value” in the four autobiographies of the disabled. Since many papers in this regard have been published in our journal, we call for your attention.
The concept of life writing has been explored in our journal repeatedly. With biography and autobiography as its core, life writing is a broader term. It is helpful to understand its connotation that Zhu Yan analyzes Canadian Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro’s The View from Castle Rock as a text in this category.
One biographical research on Republican figures is published in this issue. The awakening progress of feminine consciousness in the confrontation between Chinese and Western civilizations is delineated in the interpretation of Daughter of Confucius:A Personal History made by Li Junhao and Yin Dexiang. This biography is their recent discovery overseas and may function as a supplement to China’s history of modern life writing.
Diary is a long-standing form in China’s culture. Owing to the secrecy, however, few of them are available to the general public. This situation has changed recently. Two papers are concerned with diary texts in this issue and all the diarists are famous cultural figures, though their experience and purpose are quite different. Both scholars peruse the texts respectively to explore the historical value of private narratives and examine the diarists’ personality and life goals. Wu Mi is a famous professor of Chinese mainland. Huang Yanwei focuses on the mental world in The Sequel of Wu Mi’s Diary, his emotional catharsis in suffering, struggles, painstaking efforts and earnest expectation. Liu Kang is a fine art student leaving Shanghai for South China in the 1930s and lately becomes a prestigious artist in Southeast Asia with rare experience. Ho Yi Kai’s research on Liu’s diary is designed to sort up the rich records and discover its documentary value.
In the section of History of Life Writing, an interesting issue is raised in Xu Qinchao’s “The Power of Invention.” Taking Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway as an example, Xu argues that generations of Shakespeare have shaped a vivid female character of her out of few materials available through speculation and imagination, thus resulting in a more true-to-life character and experience of Shakespeare and a more in-depth interpretation of his dramas and sonnets. In this sense, Xu makes a supplement to the statement that “truth is the vitality of biography” and puts forward that “invention is also the vitality of biography”. Are the two statements in conflict with each other? We invite your discussion on this issue.
A Biography of the Time and an Autobiography of the Soul: A Study on Letters of Madame de Sévigné is also an object for history of life writing, for it records French upper-class life in the 17th century and is important materials of feminist movement history. Cao Lei stresses the “autobiography of the soul” in this paper and this work is unneglectable in the turn to autobiographical studies.
Three novelists are discussed in the section of Subject Studies. Virginia Woolf is not merely famous for the stream of consciousness novel, but one of the founders of Anglo-American modern life writing and life-writing theories. It is interesting how she combines the two different genres, which is partly accounted for by Jiao Hongle’s analysis of the influence of her father Leslie Stephen. Mark Twain mentioned “The Tennessee Land” purchased by his grandfather, which is identified by Xue Yufeng as the password to understanding Twain’s whole life and source of his “get-rich-quick complex” and “get-rich-quick narrative”. This is a reasonable and interesting interpretation. Through the comparison of different versions Kafka’s diaries and biographies, Zhao Shankui examines the life stories of some of the novelist’s family members and explores how they were converted to literary stories to reveal the process of his conception. It is a challenge to understand the biographical subject’s artistic world through the textual research of certain details, but Zhao’s efforts are a successful model.
A great many papers on the issue of narration in China’s film biography have been published in our previous issues. Fan Lulu examines narrative time and discovers “intercepting time” and “retrospective time” are two typical time-shaping strategies designed to embody the ethical intent of the director and play an essential role in constructing the biographee’s identity. This research is inspirational to textual biography.
Two researches on historical materials concern Zhou Zuoren. Tang Zhihui examines Zhou’s efforts and contribution in the new literature education at Yenching University, while Xu Xiaohong discusses the writer’s visit to Japan in 1934 and his relations with Dojin Association. The two contributors demonstrate their adeptness in collection and selection of materials and contribute to understanding such a complex figure as Zhou Zuoren.
“On the Selection of Biographical Subjects and Exploration of Materials” is a lecture by Han Shishan and elaborates on the fundamental issues in life writing frequently discussed by life writers and theorists. The unique value of this paper lies in Han’s well-informed discussion based on his rich writing experience and his humorous style.
Two papers are published in the section of “Academic Info”. One is a report of the accomplishment of the Major Project (“Compilation and Research of Overseas Life Writing on Modern Chinese People”) sponsored by National Social Sciences Fund, and it cost more than 20 experts over seven years’ grueling efforts. This report is a valuable record in the history of China’s life writing.
Huang Rong’s conference review briefs on the discussion of the issue “Presentist and Futurist Turns of Life Writing” by life-writing experts from Peking University and King’s College London. This report features both new materials of life-writing studies and assumptions of future life writing and is worth reading.
June, 2019
Instructions to Contributors
Mission
Life writing studies have moved onto the central stage in the academia and gained ever more attention both in and outside China. As the first scholarly journal in the field of China, the biannual journal Modern Life Writing Studiesintends to fill up the blank of life writing studies in China, provide a venue for scholars all over the world, attract and promote specialists in the field.
Aiming to keep abreast of the cutting edge of life writing research, Our journal seeks to, in modern views and perspectives, explore various topics of life writing in China and in the world, with almost 20 sections included, such as Interview, Comparative Biography, Theory Study, History of Life Writing, Text Study, Autobiography Study, Diary Study, Subject Study, Film Biography, Book Reviews, Life Writing Materials, From the Life Writer, etc.
Ever since its appearance in 2013, our journal has been well-received by scholars at home and abroad and fundedby a steady grant from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It is exerting increasingly greater influence in academia with a due wide positive response. In 2017, our journal was included in CSSCI (Chinese Social Science Citation Index), and listed in the international academic literature or included in the annual annotated bibliography by world prestigious universities.
Our journal accepts both Chinese and English submissions. All the articles will be subject to anonymous peer review.
Style
Submissions are welcome from both Chinese and international researchers. Simultaneous submissions are not accepted. English papers should be between 4,000 and 7,000 words of text in length (including notes), while English book reviews are about 2,500 words. Full-length articles take up most part of the journal, but short essays with originality and fresh ideas are also welcome.
Submission Guidelines
All written submissions should be formatted according to the eighth edition of MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. All submissions should include a 100-word abstract both in Chinese and English, keywords (less than 5), a 70–word biographical statement, and works cited. Please adhere to the following requirements:
– Double spacing, Times New Roman, 12–point font
– One-inch margins
– Only Microsoft Word doc or docx files will be accepted
– Citations should be provided in parenthetical reference followed by “Works Cited”.
– Endnotes are preferred if there are any
Submissions should be emailed in Word format to the editor sclw209@sina.com. Each contributor will get two complimentary copies once his/her paper is published.
Our journal is based at SJTU Center for Life Writing. We welcome suggestions and proposals, from which we believe our journal will surely benefit.
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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Last updated: 17 January 2020
