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