The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In

“The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In” is a proposed volume in the series Critical Approaches to Comics Artists at the University Press of Mississippi. This volume will contain an array of critical essays on the comics of Alison Bechdel, offering new examinations of her entire body of work.

The collection takes as its starting point the phrase “from the outside in,” and proposes to look at Bechdel from several perspectives: Bechdel as an outsider and her changing position in the world of comix/comics and beyond; her investigation of interior life and its relationship to the outside world; and her many modes of drawing, writing, and performing queerness. Essays from interdisciplinary perspectives are encouraged, including critical approaches from comics studies, art history, cultural studies, material culture, print culture, visual culture, women’s writing, life writing, queer studies/theory/history, lesbian studies/theory/history, trauma studies, psychoanalytic theory, history of sexuality, archive studies, and adaptation studies.

Essays that engage Bechdel in light of the following topics would be particularly welcome (although this list is by no means exhaustive or prescriptive; essays that address topics not listed here will be considered as well):

Bechdel as outsider/in from the margins:

• alt-comix: the world of Dykes to Watch Out Forand how it changed the world of comics/comix
• Bechdel and alternative weeklies
• Bechdel and censorship
• Bechdel in the classroom/Bechdel and pedagogy
• Bechdel in the academy/the Bechdel industry
• Bechdel the bestseller

Interiors and the outside world:

• imagined spaces/places/objects
• furniture and design
• architecture
• autography/memoir/life writing
• trauma/mourning
• inside the archive
• sexuality and subjectivity

Drawing, writing, performing queerness:

• the many modes of Alison Bechdel: blogging, interviews, adaptation, photography, film and Hollywood cinema (the Bechdel test)
• Bechdel and music: popular, classical, queer
• Bechdel and Broadway: music, adaptation, the tradition of comics on the stage
• Bechdel and the body: gender normativity, butchness, bodybuilding
• Bechdel and performativity
• Bechdel as lesbian writer/artist/activist
• Bechdel and queer print culture
• LGBT history and activism

Please send abstracts of at least 500 and no more than 1000 words, along with CV and contact information, to Janine Utell at janine.utell@gmail.com by December 1.  Any queries also welcome at any point in the process.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The International Auto/Biography Association

Chapter of the Americas Conference: May 15-17, 2017

Lives Outside the Lines: Gender and Genre in the Americas

A Symposium in Honour of Marlene Kadar

To be held at the Centre for Feminist Research, York University, Toronto.

We invite proposals for the third biennial meeting of IABA Americas that will be held at the Centre for Feminist Research in Toronto with support from the US Fulbright Program. The conference will explore the multiple lines that gendered lives in the Americas cross, both physical boundaries and intangible crossings. The conference is dedicated to the celebration of the scholarship of Marlene Kadar, a Canadian theorist and critic whose contributions have dramatically changed the field by pushing the conceptual boundaries of what constitutes life writing and expanding its interdisciplinary methods of study.

The themes suggested below relate to and amplify Kadar’s research interests and are clustered around issues of gender and genre with special attention given to trauma and illness studies, archival methodologies, and transnational themes in the Americas. Potential subjects include, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Gender in migration, dislocation, displacement, transit;
• Gender constructions on and across borders;
• Transnational and decolonial practices of gender and embodiment;
• Intersectional interrogations of gender and sexuality with race, class, body size, health, and ability;
• Fluidity of genders, sexualities, becoming bodies;
• Bodes in extremis, bodies in pain, medicated bodies, permeable bodies;
• Creativity and illness; living with life-threatening illness; living with death/dying;
• End-of-life interview and (auto)pathographic genres;
• Intimacies of health care biopower;
• “Traumics” (comics of medical trauma, violence, abuse, and war);
• Plasticity of life writing;
• Hybrid forms and practices;
• Multimedial and multimodal life writing;
• Emerging genres (Instagram, selfie, I-doc, digital diary, etc.);
• Secret as a genre, unpublished secrets;
• Practices of testimony in multiple modes (oral, digital, photographic, film, documentary, writing);
• Intersections of life writing and the life sciences;
• Gendering and racializing the archives;
• Sensorial and affective encounters in the archives;
• Empathy, sympathy, and compassion;
• Interdisciplinarity of archival work;
• Methodological practices related to gender and genre; and,
• Pedagogical intersections of gender and genre.

Please send 300-word abstracts with brief biographical statements as email attachments to the convenors: Eva C. Karpinski, York University [evakarp@yorku.ca] and Ricia Anne Chansky, University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez [ricia.chansky@upr.edu] by October 31, 2016. Decisions will be made by January 15, 2017. Please be aware that space is limited. Inquiries are welcome.

The IABAA supports presenters’ rights to their own language preferences. While we do ask that abstracts be submitted in English or in English and a second language, we will assist with arranging translation for scholars who would like to present their papers in Spanish, Portuguese, or French.

Eva C. Karpinski is Associate Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto. She edited Pens of Many Colours: A Canadian Reader (3 editions). She is the author of Borrowed Tongues: Life Writing, Migration, and Translation (2012) and co-editor of Trans/Acting Culture, Writing, and Memory (2013). She edited a special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies on “Broken Dialogues.”

Ricia Anne Chansky is Associate Professor of Literature at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. She is the editor of the journal, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, and editor of three books: The Routledge Auto/Biography Studies Reader, Auto/Biography in the Americas: Relational Lives, and Auto/Biography across the Americas: Transnational Themes in Life Writing. She is a Fulbright Specialist in American Studies and the founder of the International Auto/Biography Association – Chapter of the Americas.

Marlene Kadar is a professor in the Department of Humanities and Gender and Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto. She has published extensively in the field of life writing, especially in relation to traumatic historical events, archival lives, and memory studies. Her 1992 essay on life writing as a critical practice is one of the first comprehensive attempts to theorize this genre. She has co-edited four volumes on life writing theory: Tracing the Autobiographical (2005); ARIEL: Life Writing in International Contexts (2008); Photographs, Histories, and Meanings (2009); and Working Memory: Women and Work in World War II (2015). She is the co-editor of Working in Women’s Archives (2001). She is the editor of the Life Writing Series at Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies announces publication of volume 4 by AMS Press, Inc., of New York. The book was co-edited by Thomas R. Smith and Carol DeBoer-Langworthy.

CFP: “The Critical ‘I’”
NEMLA Mar 17-20, 2016, Hartford. CT
Abstract deadline Sep 30, 2015 

This roundtable examines the explored and unexplored possibilities (and challenges) of the autobiographical “I” in academic scholarship and literary criticism, both inside and outside the academy.

Scholars of life writing, such as Nancy K. Miller (Enough About Me, Bequest & Betrayal), have often included the personal in their scholarly projects. Yet, what might those traditionally marginalized by race, class, gender, sexuality, culture, and religion, add to various academic disciplines because of their personal experience. The social science forum Artic anthropology, addressing the combined disciplines of ethnography and biography, queried: “If, as [anthropologist] Michael Herzfeld has argued, the combination of these two genres as ‘ethnographic biography’ promises to overcome the vexing and ultimately specious divide between individual, socio-cultural and historical domains of experience, how might scholars across diverse fields take advantage of this potential?” Furthermore, creative scholars, such Wayne Koestenbaum (The Queen’s Throat) and, more recently, Louis Bury (Exercises in Criticism), have employed poetic, autobiographical aspects in their critical work, while encouraging scholars to look at the critical work done by autobiographical creative writers such as Geoff Dyer (Out of Sheer Rage).

Although it can be argued that much academic criticism has an autobiographical basis, in terms of what animates an author’s passion and interests, the inclusion of the self is often discouraged because of its perceived lack of objectivity and/or rigueur. Furthermore, effective use of autobiography in scholarly writing can be difficult to employ, as autobiographical and scholarly concerns should, ideally, complement each other, with the personal advancing the scholarly project; in some cases, its exclusion may hamper or falsify the critical work being done. This roundtable will provide creative scholars with an opportunity to discuss the challenges and potential of the critical “I.” Proposals representing a variety of disciplinary perspectives, historical eras, and methodological approaches are all welcome. 

Submission Guidelines

This panel will be a part of the 47th Annual NeMLA Convention, March 17 to 20, 2016, in Hartford, CT.

Interested authors should submit abstracts of no more than 250 words through the CFP list on NeMLA’s website https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/15697.  Submissions must also include the author’s full name, email address and institutional affiliation.

Submissions must be received by September 30, 2015.

Accepted panelists must be members of NeMLA by December 1, 2015, and register for the conference by the same date in order to present. Participants may only deliver one paper at the conference.

Inquiries (but not proposals) should be sent to David Bahr (dbahr@bmcc.cuny.edu)

CFP: “The Critical ‘I’”
NEMLA Mar 17-20, 2016, Hartford. CT
Abstract deadline Sep 30, 2015 

This roundtable examines the explored and unexplored possibilities (and challenges) of the autobiographical “I” in academic scholarship and literary criticism, both inside and outside the academy.

Scholars of life writing, such as Nancy K. Miller (Enough About Me, Bequest & Betrayal), have often included the personal in their scholarly projects. Yet, what might those traditionally marginalized by race, class, gender, sexuality, culture, and religion, add to various academic disciplines because of their personal experience. The social science forum Artic anthropology, addressing the combined disciplines of ethnography and biography, queried: “If, as [anthropologist] Michael Herzfeld has argued, the combination of these two genres as ‘ethnographic biography’ promises to overcome the vexing and ultimately specious divide between individual, socio-cultural and historical domains of experience, how might scholars across diverse fields take advantage of this potential?” Furthermore, creative scholars, such Wayne Koestenbaum (The Queen’s Throat) and, more recently, Louis Bury (Exercises in Criticism), have employed poetic, autobiographical aspects in their critical work, while encouraging scholars to look at the critical work done by autobiographical creative writers such as Geoff Dyer (Out of Sheer Rage).

Although it can be argued that much academic criticism has an autobiographical basis, in terms of what animates an author’s passion and interest, the inclusion of the self is often discouraged because of its perceived lack of objectivity and/or rigueur. Furthermore, effective use of autobiography in scholarly writing can be difficult to employ, as autobiographical and scholarly concerns should, ideally, complement each other, with the personal advancing the scholarly project; in some cases, its exclusion may hamper or falsify the critical work being done. This roundtable will provide creative scholars with an opportunity to discuss the challenges and potential of the critical “I.” Proposals representing a variety of disciplinary perspectives, historical eras, and methodological approaches are all welcome.

Submission Guidelines

This panel will be a part of the 47th Annual NeMLA Convention, March 17 to 20, 2016, in Hartford, CT.

Interested authors should submit abstracts of no more than 250 words through the CFP list on NeMLA’s website https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/15697.  Submissions must also include the author’s full name, email address and institutional affiliation.

Submissions must be received by September 30, 2015.

Accepted panelists must be members of NeMLA by December 1, 2015, and register for the conference by the same date in order to present. Participants may only deliver one paper at the conference.

Inquiries (but not proposals) should be sent to David Bahr (dbahr@bmcc.cuny.edu)

Hello Life Writing Division Members,

I am working on a proposal for an Auto/biography Theory textbook, and I’d like to show that there’s a market for it…if you teach a life writing, biography or auto/biography course, can you reply to this post and indicate the course name and institution? Thank you!

Regards, Julie Rak, Past Chair of the Life Writing Division

Textual Versions and Autobiographical Memory

The Affective Disorder and the Writing Life

http://us.macmillan.com/theaffectivedisorderandthewritinglife/StephanieStoneHorton

Hello Division Members!

Here are the sessions sponsored by our division, as well as the time and location for our reception: all are invited!

Reception: Friday, 10 January, 7:00–8:15 p.m., Armitage, Chicago Marriott

SESSIONS
Thursday, 9 January
180. Stealing Lives: Appropriation, Hoaxes, Ownership
7:00–8:15 p.m.
Program arranged by the Division on Autobiography, Biography, and Life Writing

Presiding: Julie Rak, Univ. of Alberta

1. “‘That Ain Me’: Race and the Fake Memoir,” Heidi Bollinger, Hostos Community Coll., City Univ. of New York

2. “Victim/Victor: Stalking the Subject of Life Writing,” Molly Pulda, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York

3. “The Biographical Novel: A Misappropriated Life or Truthful Fiction?” Michael Donald Lackey, Univ. of Minnesota, Morris

4. “Collaboration and Consent,” Brian J. Norman, Loyola Coll.

Saturday, 11 January
563. Postcolonial Graphic Memoirs
1:45–3:00 p.m.
Program arranged by the Division on Autobiography, Biography, and Life Writing

Presiding: Linda Haverty Rugg, Univ. of California, Berkeley

1. “Malamine, un africain à Paris: A Closer Look at Contemporary Postcolonial Unbelonging,” Michelle Bumatay, Univ. of California, Los Angeles

2. “Self-Construction of a Transnational Feminine Identity in an Andean Context: Power Paola’s Virus Tropical,” Felipe Gómez, Carnegie Mellon Univ.

3. “Drawing Memories, Visualizing Texts: Transnational Belonging in GB Tran’s Vietnamerica,” Lan Dong, Univ. of Illinois, Springfield

4. “Illustrating Alternate Narratives: Unconsumable Racialized Bodies of Young Women in Half World and Skim,” Michelle O’Brien, Univ. of British Columbia

Sunday, 12 January
674. The Work of Life Writing in and for Vulnerable Ethnic Communities
8:30–9:45 a.m.
Program arranged by the Office of the Executive Director
Presiding: Irene Kacandes, Dartmouth Coll.

1. “Risking Vulnerability: The African American Conversion Narrative and the Burden of Slavery,” Susan Beth Winnett, Heinrich-Heine-Universität

2. “‘Hundreds of Bodies on Two Continents, Telling a Single Story’: Assembling Narratives of Genocide in Clea Koff’s The Bone Woman,” Kimberly Nance, Illinois State Univ.

3. “Refugee Life Writing in Australia: Redefining the Testimonio,” Laetitia Nanquette, Univ. of New South Wales

4. “My Country versus Me: Technology, Espionage, and Chinese American Life Writing,” Yuan Shu, Texas Tech Univ.