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A newly formed organization, the International Auto/Biography
Association, was created in June 1999 at the International Conference
on Auto/Biography in Beijing. The organizing committee is composed
of Alfred Hornung (Germany), Margaretta Jolly (United Kingdom),
Craig Howes (United States), Thomas R. Smith (United States),
and Zhao Baisheng (China).
This association is sponsoring a new discussion list about life
writing. In addition to discussions of critical and theoretical
issues, the list contains postings on upcoming conferences, calls
for papers, new publications, and other matters that should be
of interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of life writing
around the world.
To subscribe to the list, send an email to:
listproc@hawaii.edu
Put nothing on the subject line of the message. On the first line of the message, type:
subscribe iaba-l first name last name
If you have any questions about subscribing, please contact the list moderator, Craig Howes, at biograph@hawaii.edu or at the Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA.
Call for Papers:
Fourth International Auto/Biography Association (IABA) Conference
Inhabiting Multiple Worlds: Auto/Biography in an (Anti)Global Age
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, 15-20 March 2004
What implications are there for life-writing in an age that
is at once
increasingly global and anti-global? In which locality, nationality,
race,
ethnicity and creed are becoming less important in some places
and yet
strongly resurgent in others?
Many contemporary auto/biographers write of inhabiting multiple
worlds, of
living between different cultures, languages, ideologies, discourses,
localities, domains, or dimensions of experience. Their narratives
are often
intersected by multiple allegiances, to here and there, past and
present,
actual and imagined, traditional and modern, centre and periphery,
descent
and consent. What does this signify? That living in multicultural
societies
and with rapid intercontinental travel, global media, education
and
communications, individuals are tending less and less to configure
their
identities simply within the confines of nation, locality, gender,
ethnicity, or race? At the same time, there are signs that identity
seems to
be enacted by some writers as resistance to such things as linguistic
and
cultural homogenisation, immigration, multiculturalism, secularisation
and
economic transnationalism. Are we seeing the end of "identity
politics" or
its transformation? The beginning of "global culture"
or the beginning of
its end?
We welcome any topics or suggestions for panels that seem relevant
to the
overall theme. The following are a few suggestions:
· Immigrant and diasporic self and life narratives,
especially (given our
location) the Chinese diaspora.
· Travel writing as auto/biography - diary, letters
etc. Marco Polo and
others as "global subjects".
· Electronic self and life writing, the internet, global
identity online,
"digitised subjects".
· Global media - film, video, TV, internet -- and identity construction.
· Blockbuster memoirs and auto/biographies, global publishing,
the
manufacture of global fame.
· The bi- or multilingual self, non-Anglo self narratives
and identities,
(resistance to) English as world language.
· Education, the media, and the multiplication of worlds.
· Inhabiting multiple worlds in auto/biography before
and after the mid
twentieth century - e.g. in colonial situations.
· New identities enacted via global movements - e.g.
peace, green, women's,
human rights, anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation.
· New forms of auto/biographical writing that deal with
the multiple worlds
of contemporary life.
Venue: The conference will be held in Hong Kong, "Asia's
world city" and the
meeting place of many worlds. The venue is The Chinese University
of Hong
Kong, located on a beautiful wooded site overlooking Tolo Harbour
in the New
Territories. In one direction the campus is about twenty minutes
by train
from downtown Kowloon and in the other about twenty minutes from
Shenzhen, a
vibrant new city in the PRC. In March the climate is moderate,
in the mid
20s centigrade. The Hong Kong Arts Festival and the Hong Kong
Film Festival
are held annually at about this time.
Closing date for abstracts: 15 September 2003
Abstracts: should be about 200 words and include a 3 or 4 line
bio. Send to
Tracy Liang, Department of English, Chinese University of Hong
Kong, Shatin,
Hong Kong or email to tracyl@cuhk.edu.hk. A conference website
will be
constructed at www.cuhk.edu.hk/eng.
Accommodation: can be provided on campus for about US$50 (including
breakfast) per night. Please indicate if you would like us to
reserve you a
room.
Organizing committee: David Parker, KK Tam, Timothy Weiss,
Lisa Wong, Benzi
Zhang
IABA conferences: This conference is the fourth in a series
that began at
Peking University in 1999. Others have been held at the University
of
British Columbia in Vancouver in 2000 and at La Trobe University
in
Melbourne in 2002. Further conferences are planned for the University
of
Mainz in Germany in 2006 and Hawaii or Michigan in 2008.
David Parker
Professor and Chair, Department of English
Acting Director, English Language Teaching Unit
Room 338 Fung King Hey Building
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin NT
Hong Kong
phone: (852) 2609 7001/7006
fax: (852) 2603 5270
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/eng/
Announcements should be sent to Joseph Hogan
Last Updated: 10/09/2002