[csaa-forum] CFP: Life Writing and Intimate Publics

Poletti, Anna apoletti at csu.edu.au
Thu Aug 6 16:23:28 CST 2009


apologies for x-posting

Call for Papers: The 7th Biennial International Auto/Biography Association Conference

University of Sussex • 29 June–2 July 2010

Conference Topic: Life Writing and Intimate Publics

The Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research and the International Auto/Biography Association invite scholars and life writers to attend the 7th IABA conference, at the University of Sussex, Brighton, England.

Late modernity has spot-lit intimate relations. Families, feelings and love lives have been opened to public politics through pressures of globalisation, digitisation, the mass media and social movements such as feminism. At the same time, traditional citizenships of public rights and responsibilities find new definition through trauma, consumption, identity and care. As boundaries between ‘public’ and ‘private’ multiply, new constituencies of belonging and claim are convened, from Fathers for Justice to flood survivors to Facebook. This conference begins from Lauren Berlant’s term ‘intimate public’ to explore these new constituencies in relation to life writing and life storying across media, discipline and profession.

Life writing and life story construct intimate publics in autobiographies, biographies, diaries, oral histories, blogs, reality television, photography, letters, life histories, documentaries, graphic memoirs, quilts, exhibitions, mobile phone texts. They have also been crucial agents in constructing counter-publics. We welcome papers dealing with the following questions, and others which may be related to the conference theme:

How do life writings construct citizenship, civic relations and/or counter-publics? How is life history used in non-governmental public actions and activisms? And how have governmental organisations used life history and life writing?

What intimacies are facilitated by life writings and life stories?

How does life writing relate to life story, life history and oral history?

How has life writing and life story participated in care contexts such as parenting, social work, health, education? What discourses of risk, claim, vulnerability, rights and responsibilities are revealed in life writings and their uses?

What engagements do/should life writing and life history have with therapeutic cultures?

How does the economy of life story production and consumption relate to the construction of intimate publics and who are its consumers and producers?

In what ways can we compare ethical codes for life writing, oral history and life history? How do these manage the nature of intimate publics?

How do life writing and life history contribute to public and private archives and to public history/heritage?

How does life writing construct or obstruct cross-cultural or cross-linguistic relationships?

As we understand more about the work of life writing, how is life writing making us work?

What relationships persist between life writing as aesthetic and as social act?

Because our primary concern will be stimulating and sustaining conversation between conference participants, papers should be limited to fifteen minutes in length. This will ensure time in all sessions for questions and discussion. Panels on a single topic and submitted together are welcome. (Panels and sessions will have three presenters.) Panels and individual papers may be conducted or delivered in the language of the participant’s choice ­let us know well in advance so we may make all necessary arrangements. All participants should inform the organizers about media requirements ­DVD, internet, visual projection, audio, and so on.

Abstracts for papers should be @300 words long. There should be an abstract for each paper in a panel presentation. The deadline for abstracts will be 1 September, 2009. Though e-mail is preferred, abstracts can be submitted by mail or fax to the following numbers and addresses.

IABA Conference Call for Papers • c/o The Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research •
Centre for Continuing Education • University of Sussex • Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QQ, England
e-mail: m.jolly at sussex.ac.uk • fax: 01273 877534


Dr. Anna Poletti
Lecturer in English
School of Humanities & Social Sciences
Charles Sturt University
Locked Bag 678
Wagga Wagga NSW 2678

e: apoletti at csu.edu.au
ph: + 61 2 6933 2478
fax: +61 2 6933 2792



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