Table of Contents
- Tracing the Autobiographical, edited by Marlene Kadar, Linda
Warley, Jeanne Perreault, and Susanna Egan
- Introduction: Tracing the Autobiographical: Unlikely Documents,
Unexpected Places Jeanne Perrreault and Marlene Kadar
- Katie.com: My Story: Memoir Writing, the Internet and Embodied
Discursive Agency Helen M. Buss
- Reading the Autobiographical in Personal Home Pages Linda
Warley
- Reality TV Has Spoken: Auto/biography Matters Gabriele
Helms
- Performing the Auto/biographical Pact: Towards a Theory of
Identity in Performance Sherrill Grace
- Domestic Space and the Idea of Home in Auto/biographical
Practices Kathy Mezei
- The Shifting Grounds of Exile and Home in Daphne Marlatt's
Steveston Susanna Egan
- Law Stories as Life Stories: Jeanette Lavell, Yvonne Bédard and
Halfbreed Cheryl Suzack
- Muriel Rukeyser: Egodocuments and the Ethics of Propaganda
Jeanne Perreault
- Gender Nation and Self-Narration: Three Generations of Dayan
Women in Palestine/Israel Bina Toledo Freiwald
- Giving Pain a Place in the World Aboriginal Women's Bodies in
Australian Stolen Generation Autobiographical Narratives Christine
Crowe
- Circular Journeys and Glass Bridges: The Geography of
Postmemory Adrienne Kertzer
- The Devouring: Traces of Roma in the Holocaust: No Tattoo,
Sterilized Body, Gypsy Girl Marlene Kadar
- The Authors and Their Essays
- Acknowledgements
- Works Cited
- The Authors and Their Essays
- Helen Buss is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English
at the University of Calgary and the author of numerous
interdisciplinary studies of autobiography. Buss's Mapping Our
Selves (McGill-Queen's, 1993) won the Gabrielle Roy Prize in 1994.
Buss also edited (with Kadar) Working in Women's Archives in 2001;
as Margaret Clarke she has published novels, short stories, and
poetry. Buss's article, ""Katie.com: My Story: Memoir Writing, the
Internet, and Embodied Discursive Agency"", analyzes the young
adult ""cyberself"" of Katherine Tarbox as an autobiographical
script that has consequences for her development as a young woman.
Using a feminist autocritical method, Buss explores Katie's growing
agency—from victim to scapegoat to survivor. The stages of Katie's
growth are revealed in the form of the memoir and ultimately in her
uses of the Internet.
- Christine Crowe is Head of Credit Studies, Continuing
Education, at the University of Regina. She teaches and researches
in the area of Canadian and Australian Aboriginal autobiographical
narratives and theories. She also works in the area of Aboriginal
student retention and factors affecting first-year Aboriginal
student success. Crowe's paper, ""Giving Pain a Place in the World:
Australian Stolen Generations Autobiographical Narratives"",
considers the body as a tool for opening political and dialogic
space, and explores how maimed and tortured bodies have been
represented in Australian Aboriginal women's autobiographical
narratives. Crowe also discusses Stolen Generation autobiographies
as a way to achieve political change.
- Susanna Egan is Professor in the Department of English at the
University of British Columbia. She has published extensively on
autobiography, her most recent monograph being Mirror Talk: Genres
of Crisis in Contemporary Autobiography (University of North
Carolina Press, 1999). She is currently working on problems of
imposture in autobiography. Egan's paper, ""The Shifting Grounds of
Exile and Home in Daphne Marlatt's Steveston"", focuses on Daphne
Marlatt's long-poem cycle, Steveston, the fishing community at the
mouth of the Fraser River just south of Vancouver. The poem gives
rise to questions about Marlatt's autobiographical narration of
exile and home. As an immigrant to Canada from Australia and
Malaysia, Marlatt situates herself in this fishing community to
which Japanese immigrants came from the end of the nineteenth
century, expecting to return home, but from which they were removed
for internment during WWII. Egan illustrates how Marlatt's
attention to the constant movement of people and water and fish
includes the movement of land and of horizons, so that the migrant
situates herself in a shared impermanence that she defines in terms
of particular place.
- Bina Toledo Freiwald is Associate Professor of English at
Concordia University. Her areas of teaching and research include
critical theory, women's writing, auto/biography and identity
discourses, and Canadian literature. Recent publications include:
""Nation and Self-Narration: A View from Québec/Quebec"", Canadian
Literature 172 (Spring 2002); ""Translational and Trans/national
Crossings: French-American Feminist Mis/Dis/ Connections"", Works
and Days 20.1&2 (Spring/Fall 2002). Approaching life-narratives
as privileged sites for both the construction and interrogation of
the nation, Freiwald's essay, ""Gender, Nation, and Self-
Narration: Three Generations of Dayan Women in Palestine/Israel"",
examines the auto/biographical writings of three women. These
writings represent three generations of one of Israel's most public
families, and offer insights into the making of the imagined
community that is present-day Israel.
- Sherrill Grace is Professor of English at the University of
British Columbia, where she holds the Brenda and David McLean Chair
in Canadian Studies, 2003-05, and is a Distinguished University
Scholar. She has published widely on twentieth-century literature
and Canadian culture, with books on Expressionism, Margaret Atwood,
and Malcolm Lowry. Her most recent books are Canada and the Idea of
North (2001) and Performing National Identities: International
Perspectives on Contemporary Canadian Theatre, coedited with A.R.
Glaap. Grace's paper, ""Performing the Auto/Biographical Pact:
Towards a Theory of Identity in Performance"", explores some of the
challenges faced by playwrights who create autobiographical plays.
Drawing on recent theories of autobiography, Grace develops a
theory of autobiography-in-performance and suggests how theatre
practice differs from other autobiographical practices.
- At the time of her death from cancer on December 31, 2004, in
Vancouver, Gabrielle Helms was Assistant Professor in the
Department of English at the University of British Columbia, where
she taught courses and conducted research in the fields of Canadian
literature and culture and auto/biography studies. She is the
author of Challenging Canada: Dialogism and Narrative Techniques in
Canadian Novels (McGill-Queen's 2003), and co-editor (with Susanna
Egan) of two special issues of the scholarly journals Canadian
Literature (2002) and biography (2001). She has published several
essays on life writing and Canadian literature and contributed to
reference works such as the Encyclopedia of Life Writing and the
Cambridge Companion to Life Writing. In ""Reality TV Has Spoken:
Auto/biography Matters"" Helms demonstrates what critics of
autobiography can bring to debates about the proliferation and
popularity of reality television shows such as Survivor and Big
Brother. She examines how these shows draw on familiar strategies
and discourses of auto/biography—such as the autobiographical pact,
the confession, the diary, and the crisis-resolution plotand she
considers what these shows can reveal about contemporary modes of
self-representation.
- Marlene Kadar is Associate Professor in Humanities and Women's
Studies at York University, and the former director of the Graduate
Programme in Interdisciplinary Studies. Her Essays on Life Writing:
From Genre to Critical Practice (UTP 1992) won the Gabrielle Roy
Prize in 1993. Kadar's research interests include the politics of
life writing, including survivor narratives; the construction of
privilege and knowledge in women's life writing; and Hungarian and
Romani auto/biography in historical accounts, biographical traces,
and fragments. Kadar's essay, ""The Devouring: Traces of Roma in
the Holocaust: No Tattoo, Sterilized Body, Gypsy Girl"", examines
three troubling images in order to more fully appreciate the power
of autobiographical traces and fragments in historical memory,
especially in relation to the experience of Roma in the
Porrajmos.
- Adrienne Kertzer is Professor of English at the University of
Calgary. Her book, My Mother's Voice: Children, Literature, and the
Holocaust (Broadview Press, 2002), won the Canadian Jewish Book
Award for scholarship on a Jewish subject. Her essay, ""Fugitive
Pieces: Listening as a Holocaust Survivor's Child"", won the F.E.L.
Priestley Prize. Forthcoming essays include ""The Problem of
Childhood, Children's Literature, and Holocaust Representation"",
in Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust, ed. Marianne
Hirsch and Irene Kacandes, MLA series Options for Teaching, and the
entry on ""Holocaust Literature for Children"" in the Oxford
Encyclopedia of Children's Literature, ed. Jack Zipes, Oxford UP.
The author of numerous essays on Holocaust literature and
children's literature, she is currently working on comedy and
representations of trauma. Kertzer's essay, ""Circular Journeys and
Glass Bridges: The Geography of Postmemory"", constructs a map of
postmemory, one whose coordinates position it temporally within the
second generation, and representationally within the discourse of
adult texts. Asking numerous locational questions, it asserts that
postmemory's geography is a map that we rarely share with children,
that the representation of memory in children's books is very
different from the representation of postmemory in adult
texts.
- Kathy Mezei is Professor in the Humanities and English
Departments at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests are
Canadian literature, Quebec literature and translation, modern
British fiction, Virginia Woolf, and feminist literary criticism.
Recently she has guest-edited a special issue of BC Studies (winter
2003/04) and a special forum of Signs (Spring 2002). Mezei's essay,
""Domestic Space and the Idea of Home in Auto/biographical
Practices"", examines how domestic spaces—houses and gardens—and
the detritus of domestic life, along with everyday objects and
rituals, function as structural and thematic devices in visual and
literary representations, from photography to memoirs by Mary
Gordon and Dionne Brand.
- Jeanne Perreault is Professor in the Department of English at
the University of Calgary. She has published widely in the fields
of American women's writing, theories of subjectivity, race and
gender, and Native Canadian and American literature.She is the
author of Writing Selves: Contemporary Feminist Autography, and
""Imagining Sisterhood, Again"" for a special issue of Prose
Studies, edited by Cynthia Huff. Perreault's essay, ""Muriel
Rukeyser: Egodocuments and the Ethics of Propaganda"", examines the
unpublished materials Muriel Rukeyser produced during her period as
a propagandist in the Office of War Information. Perreault argues
that these papers can be read as ""egodocuments"" or life-writings,
asserting Rukeyser's deeply held ethical and poetic sense of
self.
- Cheryl Suzack is Assistant Professor of Native literatures in
the Department of English at the University of Alberta. She has
edited the critical edition of In Search of April Raintree and is
at work on a teaching edition of Maria Campbell's Halfbreed. Her
paper in this collection represents a longer project that explores
the relationship between law and literature and the representation
of Aboriginal/indigenous peoples as juridical subjects. Suzack's
essay, ""Law Stories as Life Stories: Jeanette Lavell, Yvonne
Bédard, and Halfbreed"", begins by discussing the problematics of
representation for Aboriginal women who have sought access to legal
intervention through the courts. It explores how court cases assert
a raced subjectivity for Aboriginal peoples that informs the logic
of the court's decision-making process. Next, it analyzes how this
legal context impinges on literary/critical debates about the
politics of Aboriginal womens writing to illustrate how literature
critiques state-imposed categories of race and gender subjectivity
so as to assert cross-cultural community affiliations. The essay
focuses on the reinstatement claims of Jeannette Lavell and Yvonne
Bedard to offer an alternative social narrative of Aboriginal
women's agency in relation to the politics of gender identity
articulated through Maria Campbell's Halfbreed.
- Linda Warley is Associate Professor in the Department of
English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. She
has published widely on Canadian, Native, and postcolonial
autobiographies and is currently writing a book about
twentieth-century autobiographical works, in print and Internet
genres, created by ""ordinary"" Canadians. In ""Reading the
Autobiographical in Personal Home Pages"" Linda Warley brings the
methods of literary studies and new media studies together in order
to conduct a close analysis of one academic's personal home page.
She examines how particular design choices shape a ""self"" that at
times conforms to familiar modes of self-representation and
sometimes challenges them. The essay models one approach to
analyzing multimodal autobiographical texts that are published
online.
Table of Contents
Introduction; Memoir Writing, the Internet, and Embodied Discursive
Agency; Reading the Autobiographical in Personal Home Pages;
Reality TV Has Spoken: Auto/Biography Matters; Performing the
Auto/Biographical Pact; Domestic Space and the Idea of Home in
Auto/Biographical Practices; The Shifting Grounds of Exile and Home
in Daphne Marlatt's Steveston; Law Stories as Life Stories:
Jeanette Lavell, Yvonne Bedard & Halfbreed; Muriel Rukeyser:
Egodocuments and the Ethics of Propaganda; Gender, Nation and
Self-Narration: Three Generations of Dayan Women in
Palestine/Israel; Giving Pain a Place in the World: Aboriginal
Women's Bodies in Australian Stolen Generations Autobiographical
Narratives; Circular Journeys and Glass Bridges: The Geography of
Postmemory; The Devouring: Traces of Roma in the Holocaust: No
Tattoo, Sterilised Body, Gypsy Girl; The Authors and their Essays.
About the Author
Marlene Kadar is an associate professor in humanities and women's
studies at York University, and the former director of the graduate
program in interdisciplinary studies. Her publications include
Essays on Life Writing, which won the Gabrielle Roy Prize (English)
for 1992. Susanna Egan is a professor in the department of English
at the University of British Columbia. Jeanne Perrault is a
professor in the Department of English at the University of
Calgary. Linda Warley teaches in the Department of English Language
and Literature at the University of Waterloo. She has published
articles in journals such as Canadian Literature, a/b:
Auto/Biography Studies, and 'Reading Canadian Autobiography', a
special issue of Essays on Canadian Writing.
Reviews
``This is a fascinating collection, full of innovative reading
practices and `egodocuments.'... All of these critics are attuned
to the more performative notions of selfhood, the contingent, and
historical projections of the self in texts.... Autobiography
writing and critism is now sharp and exciting, and as it happens
much of the best is also Canadian.... Tracing the Autobiographical
... '' -- Gillian Whitlock -- Canadian Literature, 196, Spring
2008, 200808
``The editors of this volume are to be commended for their daring
inner- and inter-generic redefinitions of autobiography. Tracing
the Autobiographical takes the navel-gazing of autobiography genre
criticism out for a cultural studies spin.... This volume is for
thos who are eager to rethink boundaries.... All essays are
refreshing and spot-on, particularly where they combine genre
theoretical reflections with historically specific
contextualization and close analytical readings.... All in all, I
highly recommend this volume to anyone with an interest in changing
their literary approach to the genre of autobiography. Tracing the
Autobiographical is sure to reenergize the discussion of generic
limitations, and I hope it will do more: encourage readers to
problematize and theorize the relationships between selves,
others/Others, and their myriad mediation practices in the age of
New Media and postmemory.'' -- Sunka Simon -- The International
Fiction Review, 34, 2007, 200710
``Since 1995, the Life Writing series has established itself as a
major forum for showcasing primary sources and theoretical work in
the field of autobiography studies in Canada.... International in
scope Tracing the Autobiographical unsettles the generic boundaries
of auto/biography (the slash consisten witha programmatic effort to
blur the lines) and offers a variety of innovative reading
strategies and interdisciplinary approaches.... Reading these
contributions is not only an intellectual feast, but also an
ethical encounter with lives lived by people who have left only
fragments or traces of themselves.... Resonating with the themes of
`ethics, tyranny, and hope' several of the essays present a
testimony of pain and erasure that leaves the reader profoundly
moved.'' -- Eva C. Karpinski -- University of Toronto Quarterly,
Letters in Canada 2005, Volume 76, number 1, Winter 2007, 200801
