Lives & Letters Mailing: October-November 2019
Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to another Lives & Letters Mailing. This month’s mailing contains information about:
1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
– From the blog: Exciting letter finds!
– From the blog: 8 documents in search of a theory
– From the blog: White-ism
– From the blog: Writing an article
– From the blog: Resigning
2. WINTER school “Uses and abuses of storytelling”
3. Conference on “Restoration Epistolarity” (11/30/2019; 3/27-28/2020) Erlangen, Germany
4. Life Writing in Translation (12/23/2019; 5/27/2020) King’s College London / Centre for Life-Writing Research UK
5. FW: AFRICAN HERITAGE / EVENT INVITATION
6. Stories We Live By: Narrative and Identity. (11/15/2019; 1/20-24/2020) University of Groningen, Netherlands
7. [FQS] 20(3) Qualitative Content Analysis I
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1. Whites Writing Whiteness: Project News
There are five new items of project news we would like to share:
From the blog: Exciting letter finds!
What would be the most exciting find in the world of letters and theorising them? A personal favourite is that Olive Schreiner’s letters to her close friend Eleanor Marx, daughter of the famous Karl, were not destroyed by the disgusting Edward Aveling but instead pawned and now discovered at a London auction. To read more potential ideas for the most exciting find, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/exciting-letter-finds/
From the blog: 8 documents in search of a theory
Giving a lecture to an assembled group of school students meeting from across a number of Scottish schools who are specialising in South Africa as part of their Scottish Highers in History has become an annual event. This year’s lecture focuses on a number of documents – some written, some photographic – that are concerned with race matters. For more, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/8-documents-in-search-of-a-theory/
From the blog: White-ism
A key concern for any project concerned with whiteness has to be that it might turn into representing, or contain residual elements of, a white-ist mentality, in yet one more time positioning white people as at the centre. How to avoid this is the topic of this blog. Minimally, critically examining whiteness should include the social practices whereby some, but not other, people are treated in ways that render them subordinate, ‘outsiders within’, by removing full humanity from them. It should also include critical interrogation of within-group dynamics and complexities as well as its out-group behaviours and practices. To read more, please go to: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/white-ism/
From the blog: Writing an article
What is involved in writing and finishing a journal article? The article in question is concerned with how Norbert Elias’s ideas about pronouns relate to their ‘on the page’ use by white people writing letters and a diary in 1871, and beyond that with the combined ‘theory and method’ involved in analysing these writings. To read about the theoretical and methodological processes involved, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/writing-an-article/
From the blog: Resigning
Letters of resignation, it seems from ‘how to’ guides, have their own etiquette and should formally set out the exact title of the job or other position the writer has held, the exact name of the person resigning, the exact period of notice they are expected to give, provide an offer to train any replacement, and a thank you to the organisation they are resigning from. Really??? To read on, please visit the blog: https://www.whiteswritingwhiteness.ed.ac.uk/blog/resigning/
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2. WINTER school “Uses and abuses of storytelling”
WINTER SCHOOL “USES AND ABUSES OF STORYTELLING”
27 NOVEMBER – 29 NOVEMBER 2019
STORY LAB & TWENTE GRADUATE SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE
The Winter School is meant for PhD students, postdoc and experienced researchers who want to improve their competence in doing and understanding narrative research. Experience with qualitative research is recommended (for required entry levels please contact Anneke Sools).
LEARNING GOALS
At the end of the course, the participant is able to
- Apply story line analysis to own data;
- Critically reflect on the uses and abuses of storytelling in science and society
- Critically reflect on reporting narrative research.
CONTENT
The theme of this year’s Winter School on narrative analysis is the uses and abuses of storytelling in science and society. In an age of fake news, public questioning of the credibility of scientific findings, and ever pervasive social media in all spheres of life, there is a need to develop ‘narrative savviness’. This entails knowledge about how narrative works and the work that stories do as well as the capacity to resist the temptations of persuasive yet harmful narratives.
The first day of the Winter School offers an introduction to narrative analysis. Anneke Sools will give an introduction of story line analysis for novice and more experienced narrative researchers. In an interactive workshop, participants will work together on an example text to gain hands-on experience with story line analysis. They will also apply the method to their own data. On the second day, two experienced researchers will give inspirational, interactional lectures on their applied narratological work on the uses and abuses of storytelling: Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenander and Maria Mäkelä. The third day consists of group presentations of story line analyses performed on data brought by participants; UT lecturers Sools and Westerhof will give feedback on these analyses that are prepared at the end of day 1 and day 2. Finally, in an interactive workshop, Gerben Westerhof will guide discussion on how results of narrative analyses are reported in the scientific domain. The participants have to prepare themselves by studying reader texts and doing homework assignments.
REGISTRATION
Costs are 350 euro (including lunches, coffee/tea breaks and reader, excluding dinner and stay).
Only PhD students of the University of Twente are free of charge.
You can register at https://www.utwente.nl/en/bms/pht/News/2019/7/85963/winterschool-2019-uses-and-abuses-of-storytelling
VENUE
Boerderij Bosch
Campuslaan 15
7522 NC Enschede
Tel: (053) 489 4071
CONTACT
Practical issues
Daniëlle Boelen & Marieke Smellink
Secretariat Psychology, Health and Technology
+31.53.489. 9180; +31.53.489.4470
pgt@utwente.nl
Programme
Anneke Sools & Gerben Westerhof
Story Lab
+31.53.489.6314; +31.53.489.6074
a.m.sools@utwente.nl; g.j.westerhof@utwente.nl
LECTURERS
Maria Mäkelä is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Director of Narrare: Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies at Tampere University, Finland. In 2018, she was Visiting Professor at the Centre for Fictionality Studies, Aarhus University. In 2019, she is President of the International Society for the Study of Narrative. She is co-editor of Narrative, Interrupted (De Gruyter, 2012) and Narrative Theory, Literature, and New Media (Routledge, 2015). She has published on consciousness, voice, and realism across media, the literary tradition of adultery, authorial ethos, and critical applications of postclassical narratologies. She is heading three research projects that deal with the contemporary instrumentalization of narratives.
Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar is an assistant professor at the Minorities and Multilingualism programme of the University of Groningen. In recent research, he explores the possibility of an applied narratology: using insights from the academic study of narrative to analyse the role of storytelling and life writing in e.g. education and developing narrative methods for improving storytelling practices. Publications on this topic include Stories of Becoming: The Use of Storytelling in Education, Counselling and Research (co-edited with Lynn Wood, 2017) and a special issue (11:1) on narrative resistance of the Global Media Journal/Australian Edition (co-edited with Hart Cohen and Rachel Morley, 2017).
Gerben Westerhof is professor in Narrative Psychology and Technology at the University of Twente. His research focuses on how life stories contribute to identity development and mental health across the lifespan with a focus on later life.
Anneke Sools is assistant professor in Narrative Psychology at theUniversity of Twente. Her research focuses on methodological innovations in story line analysis as well as on the use of narrative accounts of imagined futures to foster creativity and possibility-thinking in the face of uncertainty and change.
PROGRAMME
Wednesday 27 November
09.30 Welcome with coffee
10.00 Story Lab @UTwente (Gerben Westerhof)
10.15 Introduction to Narrative Analysis (Anneke Sools)
12.00 Lunch
13.00 Pitches of participants
14.30 Coffee and tea break
15.00 Workshop Story Line Analysis (Anneke Sools)
16.00 Storyline analysis of participant’s own data
17.30 Leisure Time
18.30 Dinner (costs not included) with Playbacktheater (free of charge)
Thursday 28 November
09.00 Interactive lecture Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenander including coffee and tea breaks
12.00 Lunch
12.30 Interactive lecture Maria Mäkelä including coffee and tea breaks
15.30 Continue storyline analysis on own data, preparing presentations
17.30 Leisure Time
18.30 Dinner with lecturers (costs not included)
Friday 29 November
09.00 Group Presentations with feedback from lecturers
10.30 Coffee and Tea Break
11.00 Group presentations with feedback from lecturers
12.30 Lunch
13.30 Workshop Reporting Narrative Research (Gerben Westerhof)
15.30 Evaluation
15.45 Coffee and Tea Break
16.00 Optional: consultation hour on individual research (Anneke Sools and Gerben Westerhof)
17.00 End of day 3
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3. Conference on “Restoration Epistolarity” (11/30/2019; 3/27-28/2020) Erlangen, Germany
The changing media environment of the English Restoration brought forth a sizeable increase in various forms of literary culture, including the birth of large-scale periodical publishing and the ready availability of the letter resulting from the establishment of the Penny Post. Contrary to the widely held consensus that the letter promoted reliability, recent scholarship has stressed the form’s deconstructive potential, allowing both readers and writers to reflect on the mediated nature of writing and the tenuous relationship between sign and reality. At this conference, we will therefore discuss Restoration epistolary culture as intimately tied to media criticism, new forms of corporeality, and changing literary values. Papers on these and related aspects of seventeenth and early eighteenth-century forms of epistolarity are welcome!
Confirmed speakers:
Prof. Dr. Thomas Beebee (Penn State)
Prof. Dr. Helen Berry (Newcastle)
Prof. Dr. Markman Ellis (Queen Mary, U London)
Prof. Dr. Joe Bray (Sheffield)
Please send a 300-word proposal for a 30-minute presentation to both organizers, Jaroslaw Jasenowski (jaroslaw.jasenowski@fau.de) and Gerd Bayer (gerd.bayer@fau.de), by 30 November 2019.
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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4. Life Writing in Translation (12/23/2019; 5/27/2020) King’s College London / Centre for Life-Writing Research UK
Call for Papers
Life Writing in Translation (Conference)
King’s College London / Centre for Life-Writing Research / 27 May 2020
The Centre for Life-Writing Research is a pioneering group producing some of the most innovative work in the field. Established in 2007, and now part of the Arts & Humanities Research Institute, it enables experts and students to share, research and exchange ideas with a wider audience. We work on all sorts of topics and periods covering a wide range of genres – biography, autobiography, autofiction, diaries and letters, memoirs, digital life writing including social media, blogs, audio and video, the visual arts (especially portraiture), poetry, and medical narratives. What connects us is an interest in the theory, history and practice of life writing.
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It’s more that when it comes to writing and reading translations the question of what is wholly normal or truly plausible, of what was really said or written, gets suspended, slightly. The translator asks me to agree to its suspension. To suspend, or to suspend even further, my disbelief. /…/ Which is to say: before we’re even in the position to critique or worry over the decisions made by the translator, some provisional agreement has already been made. We have accepted the book in English. We have accepted that the book is now written in what appears to be English. (Kate Briggs, This Little Art)
As a one-day conference, Life Writing in Translation proposes to address such topics as:
- Stylistic approaches to translating life writing: using style to translate mind, foregrounding, ambiguous translation, belle infidèle, the implied translator
A reader of translation will receive a sort of split message coming from two different addressers, both original although in two different senses: one originating from the author which is elaborated and mediated by the translator, and one (the language of the translation itself) originating directly from the translator. (Schiavi 1996)
- Translating as re-writing: reconstructing the author’s image and lived experience, the translator’s impact, re-translation
In the case of translated autobiography, subtle variations of style may give rise to significant shifts in point of view that constructs a different persona of the autobiographer. (Xu Yun 2017)
- Cross-cultural translation of life writing: translator as the producer of relations – is the I international?
We receive these books newly made by the hands of translators, and the small contracts that those hands make, between translator and writer, reader and translator, language and language, culture and culture, experience and experience are, as Edith Grossman puts it, as vital to our continued reading and writing, to the vitality of our language, our cultures and experiences as the books themselves. (Kate Briggs, This Little Art)
- Becoming one: the translator’s melding with the author and its curious consequences
Like the ghostwriter, the translator must slip on a second skin. Sometimes this transition is gentle, unobtrusive, without violence. But sometimes the settling in is abrupt, loud, and even disagreeable. For me, “plunge deep” tactics that go beyond the mechanics of translation help: coaxing out references to reconstruct the author’s cultural touchstones (books, film, music); reading passages aloud, first in the original and then in translation, until hoarseness sets in; animating the author’s story through my senses, using my nose, my ears, my eyes, and my fingers; devouring every clue to imprint the range of the author’s voice (humor, anger, grief, detachment) on my translation. (Lara Vergnaud, The Paris Review)
- The translator-reader contract: the tole of the ‘active’ reader
I think of Renee Gladman, poet, novelist and translator, asking her interviewer in an interview: ‘When you’re reading translations, don’t you sometimes feel the racing heartbeat of the translator trying to get shit right?’ /…/ And the question is: Well, do you? Do I? Reading translations, is this the kind heat that you – or indeed I – want to feel? Or no, not really, not al all? (Kate Briggs, This Little Art)
- Publishing perspectives: how publishers and booksellers tackle life writing in translation – the ‘three percent problem’
We welcome academics, translators, poets, writers, booksellers and publishers and invite proposals for individual papers, dialogues/interviews, panels, round tables and creative or reflective submissions. Please send your proposals via email to pia.prezelj@kcl.ac.uk.
Conference language: English
Suggested formats:
- Individual paper (15 minutes slot, abstract max. 300 words)
- Dialogue/Interview (30 minutes slot, 2 participants, abstract max. 300 words)
- Panel (60 minutes slot, 3 participants including chair, abstract max. 600 words)
- Round Table (45 minutes slot, 3/4 participants, abstract max. 600 words)
- Creative/Reflective Submission (15 minutes slot, fiction and non-fiction,
proposal max. 300 words)
Deadline for proposals: 23 December 2019
Notification of acceptance: 27 January 2020
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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5. FW: AFRICAN HERITAGE / EVENT INVITATION
FROM NARMER’S KEMET TO CLEOPATRA’S EGYPT
The 2nd PRESENTATION by African Heritage Forum
Lecturer: Robin Walker: Q&A led by Arthur Torrington
Saturday 16 November 2019 from 6.30pm to 8.30pm
VENUE: Claudia Jones Organisation, 103 Stoke Newington Road, LONDON, N16 8BX
Saturday 16 November 2019 from 6.30pm to 8.30pm
ADMISSION FREE | TICKETS from eventbrite
Further information from: africanheritageforum@gmail.com
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6. Stories We Live By: Narrative and Identity. (11/15/2019; 1/20-24/2020) University of Groningen, Netherlands
Dear friends and colleagues,
I would like to draw your attention to an upcoming Winter School, titled Stories to Live By: Narrative and Identity, organized at the University of Groningen. This Winter School should be of interest to graduate students (MA & PhD) and early career researchers with an interest in narrative, as well as artists, professionals, and teachers.
What: A week-long programme on narrative and identity in journalism, sociology, theology, literature, art and other fields and media.
Confirmed speakers: Alberto Godioli, Marina Grishakova, Barend van Heusden, Goffe Jensma, Warda el Kaddouri, Stefan Kjerkegaard, Liesbeth Korthals Altes, Tilman Lanz, Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar, Ronald Nikolsky, Rick Peters, Anneke Sools and Margaret Tali.
Where: University of Groningen, the Netherlands (2 hours by train from Amsterdam Airport)
When: 20-24 January 2020
Costs: €375 with or €325 without accomodation
Deadline: Before or on 15 November 2019
Applications: You can apply here
More information: see the flyer and programme attached, or visit our website
May I ask you to share this message with anyone you think might be interested in applying for the winter school?
Kind regards,
Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenanda
International Auto/Biography Association Worldwide
https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home
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7. [FQS] 20(3) Qualitative Content Analysis I
Dear All,
we would like to inform you that FQS 20(3) is available online (see http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/view/65 for the current issue and http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/issue/archive for former issues).
Besides a collection of single contributions as well as articles belonging to FQS Reviews, “Qualitative Content Analysis I,” edited by Markus Janssen, Christoph Stamann, Margrit Schreier, Amanda Whittal & Thomas Dahl, is part of FQS 20(3).
All in all, 65 authors from 14 countries contributed to FQS 20(3).
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Last updated: 1 November 2019
