Center for Biographical Research

The Center for Biographical Research is thrilled to announce that “Graphic Medicine,” a special issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly (volume 44, numbers 2 & 3) and a book published by University of Hawaiʻi Press, has been nominated for an Eisner Award! 

Named for comics artist Will Eisner, the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards are the most prestigious form of recognition for excellent publications and creators in comics and graphic novels. Graphic Medicine has been nominated in the category of “Best Academic / Scholarly Work.”

• Bandits, Misfits, and Superheroes: Whiteness and Its Borderlands in American Comics and Graphic Novels, by Josef Benson and Doug Singsen (University Press of Mississippi)
• Graphic Medicine, edited by Erin La Cour and Anna Poletti (University of Hawai’i’ Press)
• How Comics Travel: Publication, Translation, Radical Literacies, by Katherine Kelp-Stebbins (Ohio State University Press)
• The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions, edited by Alison Halsall and Jonathan Warren (University Press of Mississippi)
• Teaching with Comics and Graphic Novels. By Tim Smyth (Routledge)

Comic book academics, educators, and publishers are eligible to vote for the Eisner Awards. If you’re interested in voting for Graphic Medicine, and for nominees in any of the thirty-one other categories, follow this link to apply: https://https://form.jotform.com/230927489799177. Eligible voters will then be invited to cast their votes until June 9. The deadline to register to vote is June 2.

For a full list of the 2023 Eisner Awards Nominees, click here!

You can find Graphic Medicine on Project Muse and as a book by the University of Hawai‘i Press.

In Graphic Medicine, comics artists and scholars of life writing, literature, and comics explore the lived experience of illness and disability through original texts, images, and the dynamic interplay between the two. The essays and autobiographical comics in this collection respond to the medical humanities’ call for different perceptions and representations of illness and disability than those found in conventional medical discourse. Edited by Erin La Cour and Anna Poletti, the collection expands and troubles our understanding of the relationships between patients and doctors, nurses, social workers, caregivers, and family members, considering such encounters in terms of cultural context, language, gender, class, and ethnicity. By treating illness and disability as an experience of fundamentally changed living, rather than a separate narrative episode organized by treatment, recovery, and a return to “normal life,” Graphic Medicine asks what it means to give and receive care. Contributors include comic artists and essayists Safdar Ahmed, John Miers, Suzy Becker, Nancy K. Miller, Jared Gardner, Kiene Brillenburg Wurth, JoAnn Purcell, Susan Squier and Erin La Cour.

We are working on Biography’s annual annotated bibliography of critical and theoretical works on life writing, the most extensive reference of its kind, and before finalizing it, we want to make sure it is as timely, inclusive, and extensive as possible.

If last year (from January to December 2022) you published, edited, or coedited a book; wrote an article for a journal or an essay for an edited collection; or completed your doctoral dissertation, we would appreciate having that information, so that we can incorporate it into the list. (We may have already included it, but this will make sure your work is noted.) We are also interested in lifewriting-focused podcasts or other media, excluding individual presentations or talks. 

We would request the following information:

·  Full bibliographic information for each text, formatted according to MLA 9 style

·  A one-sentence annotation per text

We are especially committed to noting publications in languages other than English. If you could provide an annotation in English, however, that would be helpful.

We would appreciate getting the information by Monday, June 5. Please send your information to Caroline Zuckerman (gabiog@hawaii.edu).

Thanks in advance. This bibliography usually has between 1,400 and 1,500 entries, and represents the most extensive annual critical survey of the field. We want to make sure your work appears within it.

The Center for Biographical Research is pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 Biography Prize for outstanding creative, critical, or theoretical work in the field of life writing by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa graduate students. 

This year, we awarded one prize to Adrian Alarilla for a scholarly work of life writing, and another to Christina Lee and Kayla Watabu for their creative work. More detailed descriptions of the projects and the judges’ comments appear below. 

“Passionate engagements, intimate entrapments: Love, war, and those caught in between empire and nation” by Adrian Alarilla

The prize committee found “Passionate engagements, intimate entrapments: Love, war, and those caught in between empire and nation” to be an accomplished scholarly study of four autobiographical documentaries by Filipinx filmmakers. The committee noted the excellence of the research, the historical contextualizing, the analysis of the films, the clearly articulated argument, and the essay’s compelling political stakes.

“Kill Your Darlings” by Christina Lee

The prize committee found “Kill Your Darlings” to be a stunning work of life writing. They noted that it was beautifully written, imaginatively constructed, honest, bold in its exploration of the traumatic effects of sexual violence, and beautiful in its telling of the journey to healing and self-acceptance. The committee expressed appreciation for how elegantly this piece interweaves personal narrative, art, history, and literature as the author reflects on the limitations of linear storytelling.

“Silence as Stories: The Hidden Possibilities in Silence” by Kayla Watabu

The prize committee found “Silence as Stories: The Hidden Possibilities in Silence” to be an accomplished and sensitively written work of life writing. They expressed admiration for how the essay weaves together scholarship and personal narrative as it explores the linguistic and cultural significance of silence in Kanaka, Japanese, and Chinese contexts, while also exploring issues of intergenerational trauma, and the importance of stories.

We are pleased to announce the publication of Biography 45.3. Find it on Project Muse: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/49784.

Biography 45.3, Table of Contents

Editor’s Note

Existence is Resistance: A Reflection on Beverly “Bev” Ditsie’s Fashion Performativity

Khaya Mchunu and Busisiwe Memela 

Through a discussion of the notions of “existence is resistance” and fashion performativity, this essay journeys with Beverly “Bev” Ditsie through her iconic quare fashions from the 1990s to today. Despite the significant roles black women played in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights in South Africa, only a handful of them have garnered significant attention. Against this backdrop, we examine the contributions of Beverly “Bev” Ditsie’s quare fashion to the history of South Africa’s LGBTQ+ rights movement. We employ biographical research and photo elicitation to uncover Ditsie’s identity as a quare, black woman in 1990s South Africa. We situate Ditsie’s quare activism within the history of South Africa’s LGBTQ+ rights movement through a contextual focus on her dress in the documentary Simon & I. We argue that Ditsie’s fashion choices show a confluence of her identities as a black lesbian woman. This study not only enriches local histories in liberation and performance theory, but also presents queer narratives as they may be reflected and reimagined in contemporary fashions (such as Afropunk) in the pursuit of black quare expression.

Memory Books as Family Historiography: How a Rural Ugandan Family Wrote Their Experience of HIV

Machiko Oike

In Uganda, thousands of memory books have been written since the late 1990s by parents, mostly underprivileged widows, living with HIV for their children about their families. This article first addresses the background of memory books and then analyzes three memory books by one rural Ugandan mother in collaboration with her children. This article is based on six field visits I made between 2008 and 2016, mostly to Tororo, Uganda. I was shown over forty memory books, and interviewed writers, their family members, NGO staff, and community group leaders. Through a close textual analysis of the three memory books, I argue that the memory book represents a new form of family historiography that allows less literate people to speak and be heard.

Biographical Writing as Ethnography: The Journey of a Malagasy Worker in Beirut

Sleiman El Hajj

Building on the premise that ethnography can function as a form of biographical inquiry, this study revisits key episodes experienced by Meramo, a Malagasy domestic worker in Lebanon, alongside an interpretive commentary addressing the plight of this significant yet sidelined population, currently among the worst affected by the COVID-19 crisis. The nuances in Meramo’s narrative reveal the untold turpitudes of migrant life in Beirut, as well as the intersection between the narratives of migrant women and Lebanese women in a setting that regulates the existence of both. The article’s retelling of Meramo’s story, based on a number of interviews with the subject, also contributes to the sparse biographical representations of migrant household labor in Lebanon’s creative writing canon.

“But You’re So Touchable”: The Auto/biographical Narratives of Sujatha Gidla and Yashica Dutt

Monika Browarczyk

With Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India (2017) and Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir (2019), two auto/biographical narratives by modern, educated, immigrant women, Sujatha Gidla and Yashica Dutt emerge as new voices of Dalit writing in English. This article analyzes the narrative strategies employed by Gidla and Dutt as they tell of their individual lives intertwined with accounts of their families and the histories of their underprivileged communities. It argues that the identities performed in the texts meet the “horizon of expectations” of contemporary readers and redirect Dalit discourse.

A Portrait of Desire: On Jacques-Alain Miller’s Life of Lacan and the Anti-biographical Imperative

Will Greenshields

This essay examines Jacques-Alain Miller’s avoidance and refashioning of various conventions of biography in Life of Lacan in his attempt to adequately represent not a “Great Man” but a “man of desire”—the embodiment of a psychoanalytic ethics of desire. In doing so, comparisons are made to other biographies and memoirs such as Élisabeth Roudinesco’s Jacques Lacan, Catherine Millot’s Life with Lacan, and Sibylle Lacan’s A Father: Puzzle. A discussion of Lacan’s own resistance to biography and the mixed regard in which he held the biographies he read is followed by an explanation of the anti-biographical imperative established by Lacan and adopted by Miller as an unrealizable ideal of the psychoanalytic doctrine’s transmission without reference to the person of Lacan. The third section is a reading of Miller’s experiment in psychoanalytic life writing as an effort to represent, without resolving, the enigma of desire that Lacan is said to exemplify.

Reviews

Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840–1865, by William L. Andrews

Reviewed by Joycelyn K. Moody

Le “Pacte” de Philippe Lejeune ou l’autobiographie en théorie: Édition critique et commentaire, by Carole Allamand

Reviewed by Zoltan Varga

American Women Activists and Autobiography: Rhetorical Lives, by Heather Ostman

Reviewed by Ana Belén Martínez García

The Center for Biographical Research announces:

Thursday, May 4: “Mo‘olelo – The Foundation of Hawaiian Knowledge Book Launch Celebration”

Sponsored by the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge

Time: 5:00–7:00 pm HST

Location: Ka Waiwai

1110 University Ave

Honolulu, HI 96826

E hoolaulea pu kakou! Celebrate with the contributors Ahukini Kupihea, Larry Kauanoe Kimura, Kamalani Johnson, R. Keawe Lopes, Jr., Hiapokeikikane Kichie Perreria, Kekuhi Kanae Kanahele KealiikanakaoleoHaililani, Kahikina de Silva, kaipulaumakaniolono, kuualoha hoomanawanui, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, and Kalehua Krug. 

Click here to RSVP!

For more information about the book and its contributors, please visit the following link: https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/…/mo%CA%BBolelo-the…/

The Center for Biographical Research announces

the 2023 Biography Prize

Criteria for Nomination:

• The candidate should be a PhD or MA student in any graduate department of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (or have graduated with an MA or PhD in December 2022).
• The submission can be work written for a class, a section of a thesis or dissertation, or a completed thesis or dissertation. If written for a class, it should be work completed between May 2022 and April 2023 (and not previously submitted for a Biography Prize).

The project should be 3,000 to 10,000 words in length. Longer projects can be submitted in their entirety, with a particular chapter or section highlighted for consideration. The work should demonstrate knowledge or awareness of central debates and theorizing in the field and study of life writing.

Please send nominations (graduate student’s name and subject or title of project) and contact information to Caroline Zuckerman (gabiog@hawaii.edu) by Monday, April 17 at 5 pm HST.

Once you send your nomination, the Center for Biographical Research will notify the student to arrange for submission of the project. Candidates may also nominate their own work for the award. The deadline for submissions is Monday, April 24 at 5 pm HST.

The winner of the Biography Prize receives a monetary award and is invited to give a presentation in the Brown Bag Biography lecture series.

The Center for Biographical Research is thrilled to announce that “Graphic Medicine,” a special
issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly (volume 44, numbers 2 & 3) guest edited by
Erin La Cour and Anna Poletti, has been selected as Honorable Mention (second place) for the
Best Special Issue Award in this year’s Council of Editors of Learned Journals contest.
The CELJ judges offered the following assessment of the special issue:

Honorable Mention: “Graphic Medicine,” a special issue of Biography 
 
The number and quality of submissions for the 2022 CELJ Best Special Issue Award was
truly impressive, making adjudication both delightful and difficult. We were inspired by
the range of topics and approaches. In making our decision, we considered the clarity of
editorial vision, the significance of the contribution, whether or not an issue was
conceptually interesting beyond a single field, formal and methodological innovation, and
evidence of collaborative engagement across individual contributions to the broader
project of the issue.

The award review committee recognizes “Graphic Medicine,” a special issue
of Biography on life narratives in the medium of comics, with an honorable mention. The
decision to include different genres—both scholarly essays and original autobiographical
comics—resulted in a multi-genre issue that compellingly explores the possibilities and
concerns raised by living with (and/or alongside) illness and disability. The scope of the
articles encompassed a broad but interrelated investigation into the topic, and the editor’s
introduction effectively contextualized these articles in relation to the field of
interdisciplinary medical humanities while making a persuasive argument about how
comics “expose the subjective experiences of health and healthcare systems that may be
difficult for both practitioners and patients to understand or explain in either verbal or
visual language alone.” We appreciated the wholistic approach taken in developing the
issue, with contributions being collectively workshopped as part of the process. Finally,
the layout, typesetting, and graphics all contributed to an excellent reading experience. 

Congratulations to the coeditors—Erin La Cour and Anna Poletti—and the contributors to the
special issue—Safdar Ahmed, Suzy Becker, Kiene Brillenburg Wurth, Jared Gardner, Crystal
Yin Lie, John Miers, Nancy K. Miller, JoAnn Purcell, Susan Squier, and Julia Watson.

Biography has been recognized by CELJ for special issues twice before: in 2017, when it won
the Special Issue Award for “Indigenous Conversations about Biography” edited by Alice Te
Punga Somerville, Daniel Heath Justice, and Noelani Arista, and in 2012, when it won for
“(Post)human Lives” edited by Gillian Whitlock and G. Thomas Couser.

---

Released digitally on Project Muse in June 2022, the issue was also published as a book by the
University of Hawai‘i Press in August 2022.

In Graphic Medicine, comics artists and scholars of life writing, literature, and comics explore
the lived experience of illness and disability through original texts, images, and the dynamic
interplay between the two. The essays and autobiographical comics in this collection respond to
the medical humanities’ call for different perceptions and representations of illness and disability
than those found in conventional medical discourse. The collection expands and troubles our
understanding of the relationships between patients and doctors, nurses, social workers,
caregivers, and family members, considering such encounters in terms of cultural context,
language, gender, class, and ethnicity. By treating illness and disability as an experience of
fundamentally changed living, rather than a separate narrative episode organized by treatment,
recovery, and a return to “normal life,” Graphic Medicine asks what it means to give and receive
care.

Comics by Safdar Ahmed, John Miers, and Suzy Becker, and illustrated essays by Nancy K.
Miller and Jared Gardner show how life writing about illness and disability in comics offers new
ways of perceiving the temporality of caring and living. Crystal Yin Lie and Julia Watson
demonstrate how use of the page through panels, collages, and borderless images can draw the
reader, as a “mute witness,” into contact with the body as a site where intergenerational trauma is
registered and expressed. Kiene Brillenburg Wurth examines how microscripts productively
extend graphic medicine beyond comics to “outsider art.” JoAnn Purcell and Susan Squier
display how comics artists respond to and reflect upon their caring relationship with those
diagnosed with an intellectual disability. And Erin La Cour interrogates especially difficult
representations of relationality and care.

During the past decade, graphic medicine comics have proliferated―an outpouring accelerated
recently by the greatest health crisis in a century. Edited by Erin La Cour and Anna
Poletti, Graphic Medicine helps us recognize that however unpleasant or complicated it may be,
interacting with such stories offers fresh insights, suggests new forms of acceptance, and
enhances our abilities to speak to others about the experience of illness and disability.

We’re excited to announce the schedule for Brown Bag Biography, Spring 2023. Most of our talks will be presented online via Zoom, meaning that anyone, anywhere, can join!

As with last semester, some of our talks will be in hybrid format, with the option to attend the presentations in person in Biomed B-104 (UH Mānoa). We will hold one talk, Shawna Yang Ryan’s “Assisted Memory,” in KUY 410. We look forward to seeing some of you in person again!

We will also record and post many of the talks. You can find some past presentations on our YouTube channel here.

THE CENTER FOR BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAIʻI AT MĀNOA

PRESENTS

BROWN BAG BIOGRAPHY

DISCUSSIONS OF LIFE WRITING BY & FOR TOWN & GOWN •  THURSDAYS, 12:00 NOON–1:15 PM HST •  CHECK SCHEDULE FOR FORMAT

All are welcome to attend. For more information, please visit the Center for Biographical Research’s website http://blog.hawaii.edu/cbrhawaii/, contact us at 808-956-3774 or gabiog@hawaii.edu, or sign up for our mailing list at https://forms.gle/Sr9WdvNBD9WdwG7EA.

Spring 2023 SCHEDULE

February 2: “Mālama I Ka Wai”

Ernie Lau, Manager and Chief Engineer, Board of Water Supply 

Kathleen M. Pahinui, Public Information Officer, Board of Water Supply

Cosponsored by the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi Peace and Justice, Shut Down Red Hill Coalition, Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, Hui ʻĀina Pilipili: Native Hawaiian Initiative, the Center for Oral History, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Zoom

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/98912195994

Zoom Meeting ID: 989 1219 5994

Password: 385105

February 9: “Flow: Outdoor Counternarratives by Women from Rivers, Rock, and Sky”

Denisa Krásná, Doctoral Candidate and Student Assistant for Central European Association for Canadian Studies (CEACS), Department of English and American Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Hybrid (Biomed B-104 and Zoom)

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/97819261096

Zoom Meeting ID: 978 1926 1096

Password: 246138

February 16: “Mai Ka Hunalepo a Kaneikapuahiohio: From a dust mote to Kaneikapuahiohio”

D. Kauwila Mahi, Graduate Research Assistant and Student, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and Instructor, University of Victoria, British Columbia

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library,  the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, Hui ʻĀina Pilipili: Native Hawaiian Initiative, the Center for Oral History, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Hybrid (Biomed B-104 and Zoom)

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/95116865752

Zoom Meeting ID: 951 1686 5752

Password: 287490

February 23: “Radical Wāhine of Honolulu, 1945”

Mari Matsuda, Professor of Law, Retired, and MFA Candidate, Department of Art and Art History, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, Hui ʻĀina Pilipili: Native Hawaiian Initiative, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Zoom

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/93726513101

Zoom Meeting ID: 937 2651 3101

Password: 146708

March 2: “The Unsaid”

Yasmine Romero, Associate Professor of English, University of Hawai‘i-West O‘ahu 

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, the Center for Oral History, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Zoom

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/91920749515

Zoom Meeting ID: 919 2074 9515

Password: 064093

March 9: “Damu, color concepts, and chief in Fijian”

Apolonia Tamata, Fulbright Scholar-In-Residence (2022-2023), Hawaiian Theatre and Performance Studies, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and Senior Lecturer in Fijian Language Studies, School of Pacific Arts Communication and Education, University of the South Pacific

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, Hui ʻĀina Pilipili: Native Hawaiian Initiative, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Hybrid (Biomed B-104 and Zoom)

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/92903661186

Zoom Meeting ID: 929 0366 1186

Password: 421816

March 16: Spring Break

March 23: “Assisted Memory”

Shawna Yang Ryan, Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, Asian Studies, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: In Person (KUY 410)

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

March 30: “Dog Years: A Life in Dance”

Dr. Betsy Fisher, Professor Emerita, Former Professor of Dance, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, the Center for Oral History, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Hybrid (Biomed B-104 and Zoom)

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/98409463023

Zoom Meeting ID: 984 0946 3023

Password: 082889

April 6: “The Zone of Pure Doubt: A Poetics of Line Crossing”

Judd Morrissey, Associate Professor, Art & Technology Studies & Writing, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Hybrid (Biomed B-104 and Zoom)

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/92427319905

Zoom Meeting ID: 924 2731 9905

Password: 503699

April 13: Break

April 20: “Moʻolelo, the Foundation of Hawaiian Knowledge: Retaining Our Heritage”

Moderated by Tammy Haili‘ōpua Baker, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre and Dance, and C. M. Kaliko Baker, Associate Professor, Kawaihuelani Center for Hawaiian Language, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library,  the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, Hui ʻĀina Pilipili: Native Hawaiian Initiative, the Center for Oral History, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Hybrid (Biomed B-104 and Zoom)

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/97701653194

Zoom Meeting ID: 977 0165 3194

Password: 058294

April 27: “Moʻolelo: ke kīpaipai e kūkulu ai ka hale kanaka”

Moderated by Kaipulaumakaniolono Baker, PhD Student, Department of English, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Cosponsored by Hamilton Library, the Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge, Hui ʻĀina Pilipili: Native Hawaiian Initiative, the Center for Oral History, the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution, the School of Cinematic Arts, the School of Communication & Information, the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Presentation Format: Hybrid (Biomed B-104 and Zoom)

Time: 12:00–1:15 pm HST

Zoom link: https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/97258007876

Zoom Meeting ID: 972 5800 7876

Password: 519166

We are pleased to announce the publication of Biography 45.2, which which includes a tribute to Miriam Fuchs and our annual bibliography of works on life writing. Find it on Project Muse:  https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/49784.

Biography 45.2, Table of Contents

Editor’s Note

Remembering Miriam Fuchs

Miriam Fuchs, Life Writing, and Life

Craig Howes

A Voyage Beyond the Text as Self: Remembering Miriam Fuchs Holzman

Cynthia G. Franklin

Miriam: The Text Is Herself

Ellen G. Friedman

Miriam: Friend, Mentor, Scholar, and Teacher

Sarita Rai

Miriam, The Bookies, and I

Joseph H. O’Mealy

In the Warm Waters of Lanikai: Paddling with Miriam

Leinaala Davis

A Tribute to Miriam Fuchs: With Love from Her Student

Amy Carlson

Annual Bibliography of Works about Life Writing, 2021

Compiled by Zoë E. Sprott and Caroline Zuckerman

Books

Edited Collections and Special Issues

Articles and Essays

Dissertations

We are pleased to announce the publication of Biography 45.1, which includes open-forum articles and reviews. Find it on Project Muse: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/49084

Biography 45.1, Table of Contents

Editor’s Note

Open-Forum Articles

Screening Clara Schumann: Biomythography, Gender, and the Relational Biopic

Julia Novak

This article examines four biopics about nineteenth-century musicians Clara Schumann and Robert Schumann as gendered manifestations of the “Schumann biomyth.” It traces the development of the figure of Clara in relation to the films’ historical and political contexts, changing genre conventions, and the demands of (inter)national film industries.

Textile Auto/biography: Protest, Testimony, and Solidarity in the Chilean Arpillerista Movement

Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle

Beginning in 1975, arpillera workshops allowed women to work collectively to document the acts of violence committed against their loved ones under Augusto Pinochet’s regime in Chile. Arpilleras, burlap embroidered with patchwork depictions of people and landscapes, are made from garments of the dead and disappeared. This essay focuses on the clandestine nature of this artwork and features images of arpilleras from one of the largest known collections.

Identity Work, Sexuality, and the Reception of Testimony:
On Identification with Anne Frank

Hannah Jakobsen

In a group of online personal essays, readers of Anne Frank’s Diary narrativize their identification with Frank as the turning point in a coming-out story. Pointing to one Diary passage in particular, these reader-essayists describe relating to a sexuality that they perceive in Frank. I first ask how identification functions in life writing, examining its role in the negotiation and articulation of sexual identity in these cases. I then ask how and why—particularly given their focus on sexuality—these reader-essayists identify with the author of a canonical testimony to atrocity.

Autobiographical Convergences: A Cultural Analysis of Books by Swedish Digital Media Influencers

Gabriella Nilsson

Through a close reading of autobiographical books written by Swedish digital media influencers, individuals who live and make a living from their daily online life narratives, this article analyzes how the life narratives are plotted and framed to fit the auto­biographical format. Two interwoven but contradictory narrative themes are found. One is the depiction of digital media as a positively charged, colorful sanctuary, a cyborg world appearing to the authors in a time of need. The other theme is the individual life histories of the authors, who strive to create chronologies and seek causal explanations for the various events and experiences of their lives. While the depiction of digital media appears to be a way to justify their current lifestyle, the life history stands out as a way to counter the fragmentation of digital media.

Reviews

Research Methodologies for Auto/biography Studies, edited by Kate Douglas and Ashley Barnwell

Reviewed by Desirée Henderson

The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 1, The Middle Ages, by Karen A. Winstead

Reviewed by Derrick Higginbotham

Romanticism and the Letter, edited by Madeleine Callaghan and Anthony Howe

Reviewed by Mary A. Waters

Prison Life Writing: Conversion and the Literary Roots of the U.S. Prison System, by Simon Rolston

Reviewed by D. Quentin Miller

The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialism(s): Conflicting Discourses of Sovereignty, Jurisdiction and Territory in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Legal Texts and Indigenous Life Writing, by Jens Temmen

Reviewed by Katrina Phillips

Americánas, Autocracy, and Autobiographical Innovation: Overwriting the Dictator, by Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle

Reviewed by Renata Lucena Dalmaso

Indian Travel Writing in the Age of Empire, 1830–1940,
by Pramod K. Nayar

Reviewed by Shaswat Panda

Sports Journalism and Women Athletes: Coverage of Coming Out Stories, by William P. Cassidy

Reviewed by Michael Tsai

Templates for Authorship: American Women’s Literary Autobiography of the 1930s, by Windy Counsell Petrie

Reviewed by Pamela L. Caughie

Contemporary Feminist Life-Writing: The New Audacity,
by Jennifer Cooke

Reviewed by Kate Drabinski

Charlotte Salomon and the Theatre of Memory, by Griselda Pollock

Reviewed by Julia Watson