(With apologies for cross-postings.)
Life Writing Special Issue 2005
Reconsidering Genre
Guest editors: Gabriele Helms and Laurie McNeill
Studies of auto/biographyi.e., writing about the self and/or thershave since the earliest stages been preoccupied with questions of genre. In works that laid the foundations and established the first canons of the field, critics such as Georges Gusdorf, Philippe Lejeune,
and William Spengemann attempted to define autobiography as a genre, distinguishing autobiography proper from other related forms including the diary, the biography, and the letter. With the field established as legitimate, critics and practitioners began to revise these early normative definitions to consider a wider range of forms and media. While critical discussions no longer foregrounded genre, its continued relevance is apparent in the range of terms used to describe what we studylife writing, auto/biography, biomythography, testimonio, for example. These labels draw on implicit assumptions about genre without
explicitly addressing the effects of such terminology on interpretation. Readers and writers expectations remain for the most part tacit.
New theories of genre (especially since the 1980s) have moved away from formal classification systems and now conceive of genres as dynamic and evolving responses to recurring rhetorical situations. Scholars including Carolyn Miller, John Swales, and Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway have shifted attention from what genres consist of to what they do. Situated in social and historical moments, genres are now perceived as neither neutral nor transparent but rather ideologically charged strategies that inform auto/biographical acts.
Given both the historical importance of genre to the field of auto/biography and these revised understandings of genre, a critical re-examination of genre in auto/biography is long overdue.
This special issue of Life Writing, Reconsidering Genre, aims to initiate critical conversation on the role of genre in shaping how texts and subjects are produced and received. We invite
theoretical papers on questions of genre as well as analyses or comparisons of specific examples of auto/biographical forms. We encourage submissions on all forms and periods of auto/biography across all media.
Possible topics include:
How does the choice of genre shape the ways in which individuals represent themselves or others to particular audiences? Are all genres equally accessible to all subjects?
What are the politics of genre?
How do national/cultural contexts affect the production and reception of auto/biographical genres?
How have readers and writers expectations of auto/biographical genres changed historically?
What role do genre labels play in the marketing of auto/biographical material (e.g., creative non-fiction, docudrama, memoir, autoethnography)?
How does the study of genre benefit or limit the teaching of auto/biographical texts?
How do specific genres operate in different media? How are they understood in different disciplines?
Please send a 300-word abstract or completed papers (20-25 pages including notes and Works Cited, MLA style) together with a 100-word biographical note as Word or RTF attachments to: Dr. Gabriele Helms, Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia ([log in to unmask]) or Dr. Laurie McNeill, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Michigan ([log in to unmask]).
Alternatively, submit three printed copies to Gabriele Helms and Laurie McNeill, Department of English, The University of British Columbia, #397-1873 East Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1, Canada
Abstracts or papers are due on November 1, 2004. Following acceptance, completed papers will be due March 31, 2005.
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shurli makmillen
PhD candidate
department of english
university of british columbia
397 - 1873 east mall
vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
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