Call For Papers

Personal Effects: The Testimonial Uses of Life Writing

Special Issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 27:1 (Winter 2004)

Issue Editors: Cynthia Franklin & Laura Lyons

Deadline: September 15, 2003

Essays exploring life writing and/or life writing theory in relation to one
or more of the following issues: restitution; truth commissions; testimony;
reconciliation; reparation; human rights commissions; international
tribunals, particularly around indigenous rights. Essays from any
geopolitical context are welcome. Topics of particular interest include,
but are not limited to the following: the "stolen generations," the
detained or disappeared, sovereignty struggles, attempts to address state
violence, rebuilding civil society and institutions, labor abuses and
globalization, testimony and new technologies, the human genome project,
post 9/11 civil and/or human rights abuses.

Examples of questions that essays might engage include the following ones:

what role does testimonial evidence of human rights abuses play in the
rebuilding of civil institutions?

how do the technologies used to take testimony at tribunals and truth
commissions affect the reception and dissemination of the testimony?

what role can individual testimony play in forwarding movements for
reparations or restitutions?

how or when does a focus on individual lives limit the effectiveness of
tribunals?

how do the institutional constraints placed on truth commissions and
tribunals give rise to new genres through which individuals or communities
might offer critiques of the processes and procedures available for "truth
telling"?

how do new technologies make possible the dissemination of life narratives
that serve to expose human rights violations and/or state violence?

how might truth commissions with their focus on individuals' experiences
contain rather than initiate forms of redress?

TO SUBMIT: Manuscripts should be double-spaced and ideally between 3,000
and 10,000 words. A double-blind submission policy will be followed; the
author's name should not appear anywhere on the manuscript, but an
accompanying cover letter should contain the author's name and address.

Entirely electronic submissions are welcome; please send attachments to the
e-mail address given below.

Deadline for receipt of entries: September 15, 2003.

For more information, consultation on manuscript ideas, or to submit an
entry, contact

Stanley Schab, Managing Editor
Center for Biographical Research,
University of Hawai'i at Mänoa,
Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822 USA
Tel./Fax: (808) 956-3774
biograph_at_hawaii.edu

Please forward to your other lists, if appropriate.

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Received on Thu May 22 2003 - 02:13:32 EDT