Emily Travis (University of California - Santa Cruz)
etra@****.com (Log-in to reveal)
The auto/biography session will explore authorship, identity,
and subjectivity across genres, geographies, and modes. In conjunction
with the conference theme, we are especially interested in papers
which regard auto/biographical expression as a mode for mapping
geographies within and around the self. In what ways do fantastic and
quotidian places and spaces inform identity? How are place and space
represented in auto/biographical texts? How might auto/biographical
texts shape audience understandings of and orientations to particular
places? How might auto/biographical representations of those places
impact their physical geographies in material ways?
“Autobiography creates a self as the right instrument to seek meaning.” -Patricia Hampl
We
are open to a wide range of papers which explore auto/biographical
constructions of the self across genres, geographies, and modes. We are
especially interested in papers attuned to the conference theme,
"Geographies of the Fantastic and the Quotidian," and welcome proposals
which regard auto/biographical expression as a mode for mapping
geographies within and around the self. In what ways do fantastic and
quotidian places and spaces inform identity? How are place and space
represented in auto/biographical texts? How might auto/biographical
texts shape audience understandings of and orientations to particular
places? How might auto/biographical representations of those places
impact their physical geographies in material ways?
We encourage
presenters to explore auto/biography through interdisciplinary
approaches, such as affect studies and cognitive science, theories of
the archive and archival sciences, area studies, critical race theory,
digital humanities, feminist and theories of gender, genre studies,
materialism, media studies, queer theory, phenomenology, post- and
decolonial studies, psychology, translation and adaptation studies, and
more. Possible genres and topics could include but are not limited to:
autofiction and biofiction, autotheory, collective autobiography,
conquest and encounter narratives, diaries, documentary film, glitch
feminism, intersectional subjectivity, lyric essays, maps, memoir,
pedagogical applications for life writing, photography, social media,
and other techniques of self-narration and self-fashioning.