Chapter of the Americas Conference, The International Auto/Biography Association, Centre for Feminist Research, York University, Toronto, ON (Canada), May 15 – 17, 2017
The organizing committee invites proposal for the third biennial meeting of IABA Americas that will be held at the Centre for Feminist Research in Toronto with support form 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
- Bodies 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
- „Traumatics“ (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- Secret as a genre, unpublished secrets
- Pracitces 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 and Ricia Anne Chansky, University of Poerto Rico at Mayagüez by October 31, 2016. Decisions will be made by January 15, 2017. Please be aware that space is limited. Inquiries are welcome.
Website of the International Auto/Biography Association – Chapter of the Americas.