Lives & Letters Mailing: November 2018
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to another Lives & Letters Mailing. This month’s mailing contains information about:
1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
– New! Thinking with Elias: The Shadow State and Racialising Processes
– From the blog: Nationalism: the mind becoming mucky
– From the blog: Nationalism and race/racism
– From the blog: Epistolarity and its others
– From the blog: Edinburgh: X Press
2. Experimental Narrative in Nonfiction (Part II) (12/10/2018; 5/30-6/1/2019) International Society for the Study of Narrative, Pamplona, Spain
3. CFP: Autofiction – Theory, Practices, Cultures – A Comparative Perspective (1/31/2019; 10/19-20/2019) Oxford, UK
4. CFP: Gender and Education Association Conference 2019
5. CFP: Beyond Boundaries. Authorship and Readership in LifeWriting (3/15/2019; 10/24-25/2019) The Netherlands
6. Studying Extreme Teams & Academic Presentation Skills Workshop
7. Call for Reviews – Lifewriting Annual (4/5/2019)
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1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
There are five new items of project news we would like to share:
New! Thinking with Elias: The Shadow State and Racialising Processes
The terms ‘shadow state’ and ‘state capture’ may not be familiar in many parts of the world, but have been central to discussions of South African political life over the last few years and throw significant light on the nature of the state as it has developed over the period of the post-1994 transition. What does this tell about the utility or otherwise of an Elias-inspired account of the state in South Africa and its changes over time? And more specifically, does the racialising process thesis still seem an appropriate way to think about this, as a trajectory that parallels but also is witness to some marked departures from his ideas about the civilising process in a European context? To read more, please visit the Thinking with Elias page: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/thinking-with-elias/shadow-state-and-racialising-process/
From the blog: Nationalism: the mind becoming mucky
Reading new biographies of various Afrikaner nationalist political figures is a hazardous business. It started with Smuts and two not very good linked biographies of him by Richard Steyn, then moved to Steyn’s latest, which is on Louis Botha, and then settled into a long read of Lindie Koorts’ (2014) DF Malan and the Rise of Afrikaner Nationalism [Cape Town: Tafelberg]. The result of reading such books is to feel drawn into a way of thinking that involves bracketing if not forgetting how terrible these men were. This is what is meant by the title of this blog. To read more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/nationalism-the-mind-becoming-mucky/
From the blog: Nationalism and race/racism
There is a large and interesting literature on the origins and development of nationalism in South Africa. What are the key aspects? How do they interrelate? Present-day commentators may write as though race matters are not always a visible and pressing factor in contemplating the trajectory of development and change in South Africa, including regarding Afrikaner nationalism. But for people writing and otherwise representing social and political life as they experienced it from the 1770s on to the 1970s, in sometimes positive and sometimes negative and sometimes even bland ways, it is always somewhere on the agenda. To read more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/nationalism-and-race-racism/
From the blog: Epistolarity and its others
It has become a truism over the last few decades of epistolary scholarship that ‘the letter’ is just one albeit extremely important manifestation of something larger and more complex, that is, epistolarity. But even epistolarity has its bounds, and there are limits as to how far these characteristics can be stretched without breaking and a communication becoming something else, something different in kind. The Curiosities section of the WWW pages provides discussions of a range of examples of these border crossings or at least border troublings. To read more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/epistolarity-and-its-others/
From the blog: Edinburgh: X Press
A number of monographs from the Whites Writing Whiteness and Olive Schreiner Letters research projects have been published through Edinburgh: X Press, an independent-publishing venture. In addition to the existing titles, possible future books are on Norbert Elias and ‘travelling theory’, and on letters and auto/biographical theory. To read more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/edinburgh-x-press/
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2. Experimental Narrative in Nonfiction (Part II) (12/10/2018; 5/30-6/1/2019) International Society for the Study of Narrative, Pamplona, Spain
Experimental Narrative in Nonfiction (Part II)
The proposed panel aims to build on enthusiasm for the “Experimental Narrative in Nonfiction” panel, held at the ISSN conference in 2018. It will continue to explore how and why nonfiction uses “experimental or unnatural devices,” and the differences that obtain when such devices are used in nonfiction as opposed to fiction.
Unnatural and otherwise strange narrative devices are often used in nonfiction, in apparently contradiction with nonfiction’s imperative of truth-telling. Thought experiments in philosophy and physics routinely deploy impossible situations in order to clarify problems or paradoxes in current theory. Claude Lanzmann’s documentary Shoah eschews chronological telling in order to repudiate notions of historical causality and inevitability; Richard Dawkins’ history of life on earth, The Ancestor’s Tale, uses similar manoeuvers—for very different reasons. Edna O’Brien’s memoir Mother Ireland deploys a dizzying range of tenses while shifting between first, second and third person narration; Jamaica Kincaid’s essay A Small Place addresses a tourist directly, implicating the reader in Antigua’s legacy of colonialism. Bart Layton’s The Imposter uses alienating metalepsis and ambiguous instances of re-enactment in ways that simultaneously complicate and complement the documentary’s thematic focus on authenticity, solubility and objectivity. And so on.
Papers presented in the 2018 panel focused on autobiography, journalism, political discourse and biology. Ideally, papers in the 2019 panel will add new genres and discursive fields to the conversation; that said, proposals pertaining to any nonfiction genre will be considered. The ideal composition of the panel will be three or four papers focusing on different forms (for example, government reports, history, journalism, medicine, narrative essays, science, thought experiments, travel writing…). I am especially interested in papers that focus on a single narrative device (or a cluster of interrelated devices) and its function, formal and rhetorical effects, and relations to the fiction/nonfiction divide.
The selected papers will be gathered as a panel proposal for the upcoming conference of the International Society for the Study of Narrative in Pamplona, Spain (May 30 – June 1, 2019). To be considered for the panel, please submit a proposal outlining your paper (250 words) and short biographical note to Daniel Aureliano Newman (University of Toronto, daniel.newman@utoronto.ca) by December 10, 2018.
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
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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3. CFP: Autofiction – Theory, Practices, Cultures – A Comparative Perspective (1/31/2019; 10/19-20/2019) Oxford, UK
Call for Papers
Autofiction – Theory, Practices, Cultures – A Comparative Perspective
19th/20th October 2019 – Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK
Keynotes: Max Saunders (King’s College London), Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (University of Münster)
The term autofiction, coined by Serge Doubrovsky in the 1970s, has entered the theoretical vocabulary of literary studies as a way of describing the interplay between autobiography and fiction. Seen through the prism of 20th century literary theory, autofiction participates in the critical dialogue about authorship and identity and about the referentiality and truth value of autobiography. While the conjunction of factual and fictional modes in autobiographical writing has a long history, in recent decades authors have increasingly integrated self-reflexive commentary on the partly fictionalised constitution of the autobiographical self into their work. This has created new possibilities and conditions in artistic practice: the author seems to navigate freely as an orchestrating authority, making at times conflicting claims to factuality and fictionality in the text itself, and in paratextual commentary or performance.
There is no critical consensus regarding the term autofiction. Some see it as describing any novel with autobiographical elements, others apply more restrictive definitions. This conference seeks to bring together different theoretical approaches to autofiction, to explore the validity of the concept, and to think about how different definitions and traditions influence our reading of works at the intersection of fiction and autobiography. We invite papers on theoretical approaches and traditions, and on case studies from a comparative perspective. The discussion has been taking place mainly in Francophone, German, Scandinavian, and Anglophone theory and concerning case studies from these contexts. We invite papers that consider these traditions in comparison and that extend the discussion to other languages and geo-political areas. In this context, we are particularly interested in exploring how autofictional texts negotiate and challenge concepts of gender, race, and cultural and national identity. We also welcome papers that look at different terms for the interplay of autobiography and fiction, including autobiografiction, surfiction, and faction, and papers that question the usefulness of the terminology or of the concept of autofiction itself.
Possible topics include:
- Definitions and terminology
- Autofiction and/as genre
- Autofiction across different media
- Autofiction and theories of the self
- Autofiction, gender and sexuality
- Autofiction and national/cultural identity
- Fictionality, referentiality, mimesis
- Autofiction between criticism and practice
Submissions:
Please send the title and a 300-word abstract of the paper you are proposing, your name, institutional affiliation, and a brief bionote to all three organizers by 31 January 2019.
Contact:
Dr. Alexandra Effe – alexandra.effe@wolfson.ox.ac.uk
Marie Lindskov Hansen – marie.lindskov.hansen@fu-berlin.de
Hannie Lawlor – hannie.lawlor@wolfson.ox.ac.uk
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
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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4. CFP: Gender and Education Association Conference 2019
Dear Colleagues
Please consider submitting an abstract to present at the 2019 Gender and Education Association international conference, which will be hosted by the University of Portsmouth, UK. The CFP is attached to this email as a PDF. Please share widely.
Theme: About face: Identities, In/visibilities, Inequalities, and Intersections in education
DATES: Conference: Tuesday 25th June – Thursday 27th June 2019
Keynote Speakers (alphabetical order by surname):
- Professor Deevia Bhana, University of KwaZulu-Natal
- Professor Kalwant Bhopal, University of Birmingham
- Sindy L Joyce, University of Limerick
- Professor Heidi Mirza, Goldsmiths, University of London
- Lisa Smith, Youth Programme Leader for Travellers’ Times, Vice-Chair for Advisory Council for the Education of Romany and other Travellers
- Professor Shirley-Anne Tate, Leeds Beckett University
Call for Proposals for GEA Conference 2019: Download the CFP
Deadline to submit: Friday 4th January 2019
The Gender and Education Association 2019 conference committee at the University of Portsmouth seeks to bring together education practitioners, activists, academics, students, community leaders, artists, researchers, and policymakers to explore identities, in/visibilities, inequalities, and intersections in education through a gendered lens. Engaging with and expanding upon contemporary debates about educational inequalities (at both national and global levels), the conference invites contributions which in different ways address how structural forms of oppression – such as (hetero)sexism, racism, classism, and ableism – operate within and shape educational environments and institutions. Over the course of the conference, one of the primary aims is to move beyond discussion towards a collectively-created call to action to address systemic inequalities in education at local, national, and international levels.
Our conference theme, About Face, aims to spur conversation about the multitude of ways in which inequalities shape the contemporary global context, and how these are both enforced and challenged within and through education.
- About Face, as in a change in understanding as we reflect on the major political, social, economic, and environmental events of the last few years and the ways they have shaped and will continue to shape education across the globe.
- About Face, as in how we see each other, how we see ourselves, and how we see our world.
- About Face, as in how we are seen or unseen, recognised or misrecognised, visible or invisible.
- About Face, as in about our faces and bodies; how we self-identify and how our identities are shaped; how gender norms, ideals of physical appearance, standards of beauty, measures of femininity and masculinity are imposed upon bodies in different ways; how this impacts upon educational experiences for students and upon employment experiences for staff in educational institutions.
- About Face, as in a turning towards a recognition of identities and in/visibilities in education and a turning towards action to address intersecting inequalities.
Please see the full CFP for themes which could be explored within presentations at the conference. We invite contributions in a range of formats, including academic papers or presentations, roundtables, themed panels, symposia, workshops, creative interventions or performances, along with other formats that share ideas and generate discussions in innovative ways. Abstracts should be submitted online. Please see the full CFP for abstract submission guidance.
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This Email list is maintained by the BSA Race & Ethnicity Study Group. Visit the BSA website for further information about the group: https://www.britsoc.co.uk/groups/study-groups/race-ethnicity-study-group/
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5. CFP: Beyond Boundaries. Authorship and Readership in LifeWriting (3/15/2019; 10/24-25/2019) The Netherlands
Call for papers: Beyond Boundaries. Authorship and Readership in LifeWriting
A two-day conference held at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, 24 and 25 October 2019
In ‘The Limits of Life Writing’ David McCooey (2017) argues that in life-writing studies, the concept of limits or boundaries plays a central role. Since the rise of auto/biography studies in the 1970s and 1980s critical attention has been paid to generic limits and the limits concerning the auto/biographical subject. With respect to the former, discussions have evolved in particular around the boundaries between literary and factual writing, and between verbal, graphic, audio-visual and digital forms of life writing. In regard to the latter, academics since the 1990s have given attention to the expansion of auto/biographical subjects previously marginalized, which has deepened, among other things, the cross-cultural understanding of experience and identity. This expansion of auto/biographical subjects, but also the rise of social media as a medium for life writing have contested the limits of selfhood.
However, some other limits have gone largely unnoticed in life-writing research so far. Two of them will be the center of attention during this conference, one having to do with readership, and the other concerned with authorship. Until now little attention has been paid to the boundaries between life writing for adults on the one hand and life writing for young readers on the other. Crossing these boundaries can provide fruitful debates about how the reader matters and how studying the reception and addressed audiences of life writing is important.
Another issue that has not received much attention in life writing research is the boundary between life writing by adult authors and life narratives by young people. As Douglas and Poletti (2016) argue, the contribution of young writers to life writing has so far been largely overlooked. How do they relate to narratives by adults? How similar or different are the ways in which adult and young writers engage in modes of self-representation? And what is the influence of social media on life writing by young people?
We welcome presentations on authorship and readership in different forms of life writing by adult and young authors, marketed to adult and young readers. To what extent do authors use life writing to put issues of power, voice and agency on the public agenda? How do readers matter in the way authors of life writing address themselves to them? What are the similarities and differences between life writing for an adult audience and for young readers? What aspects define (successful) dual-audience life writing?
As life writing is relevant for academic disciplines such as the humanities and social sciences, in particular children’s literature, literature and culture studies, ethnography, anthropology and philosophy, we look forward to receiving proposals from researchers working in these fields, and to discussing disciplinary boundaries at the conference.
- Subthemes are
- Cultural diversity
- Transnational life writing
- Life writing in text and images
- Offline and online life writing
- Gender issues in life writing
- LGTBQ life writing
- Dual-audience life writing
- Creating childhoods through life writing
Keynote speakers (confirmed): Prof.dr. Anna Poletti (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) and prof.dr. Lydia Kokkola (Lulea University, Sweden)
Conference organizers: Prof.dr. Helma van Lierop (Tilburg University), Dr. Jane McVeigh (University of Roehampton), Dr. Monica Soeting (European Journal of Life Writing)
Abstracts consisting of a maximum of 250 words, a title, an indication of the subtheme your abstract fits in best, name, institutional affiliation or status as independent scholar, email address and a short bio of no more than 150 words should be sent before 15 March 2019 to Prof.Dr. Helma van Lierop at h.vanlierop@tilburguniversity.edu.
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
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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6. Studying Extreme Teams & Academic Presentation Skills Workshop
methods@manchester are pleased to announce a selection of fantastic events this December. We hope to see you there.
Studying Extreme Teams: Developments in theoretical, methodological and analytical approaches
Lunchtime Seminar
Date: 05/12/18
Time: 13:00 – 14:00
Location: Room 2.07, Humanities Bridgeford Street, University of Manchester
Book Here <https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/studying-extreme-teams-lunchtime-seminar-tickets-52810328113?platform=hootsuite>
Organizational contexts in which isolated teams operate in extreme, demanding, and high-risk environments pose challenges for researchers. Hazardous work environments are not uncommon, and include those experienced by the military, Search and Rescue operators, anti-poaching patrols, oil rig workers, deep sea saturation divers, scientific fieldwork, and humanitarian response teams. Such teams are exposed to a combination of environmental, psychological, and interpersonal stressors that are rarely present in mainstream work settings, including physical danger, inhospitable climates, monotony, lack of privacy, and limited social contact (Barrett & Martin, 2014). In the seminar I will talk about conducting research with these types of extreme teams. The presentation will focus on three areas: (1) conducting rigorous theory-based research within the constraints of an extreme environment; (2) using structured diary methods to secure intensive repeated sampling of people in these contexts; and (3) analytical approaches that are suitable for interpreting this hierarchical and longitudinal data. I’ll briefly discuss of how the findings from this research might be used to inform policy and practice and highlight future directions.
Academic Presentation Skills
Date: 07/12/18
Time: 09:00 – 15:30
Location: G.33, Williamson Building, University of Manchester
Book Here <https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/academic-presentation-skills-tickets-52355259992>
This workshop aims to provide tools to improve presentation skills in academic settings. The combination of lecture and group activities will enables the participants on the one hand need to identify shortcomings in their own presentation skills and on the other hand to improve their performance for future academic conferences and presentations.
We will cover topics such as material preparation, how to find a good introduction and conclusion for presentations, a better use of visuals, body language and how to prepare for Q&A.
The first half of the course consists of an interactive lecture capturing important aspects of the aforementioned topics. After a lunch break the participants will then engage in previously prepared mini-presentations and constructive feedback sessions. For this participants are asked to prepare a very short presentation (max. 3 min) on a topic of their choice, aimed at a non-specialist audience.
No previous experience is required for participation. This workshop is presented by Tina Hannemann, a Research Associate at the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research at the University of Manchester.
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7. Call for Reviews – Lifewriting Annual (4/5/2019)
Call for Reviews – Lifewriting Annual
Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies (published online by the Open Library of Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London) seeks reviews of recent publications, including autobiographies, memoirs, letters, and so on. We don’t accept reviews of critical or cultural theory. Word length: 1000-1500 words. Citation style: Chicago, 16th edition (author/date). Deadline for submission: April 5th, 2019. Please contact the Reviews Editor, Robert Ward, with short proposals and questions (Robert_P_Ward@brown.edu).
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
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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Last updated: 30 November 2018
