Call for contributions to a volume on depression and narrative.

The genre of the illness narrative (pathography and autopathography) is
flourishing these days. Narratives of diseases such as AIDS and cancer
are being widely published and read, and in the last decade or so the
topic of narrative and illness has received the attention of critics
such as Arthur Frank, Anne Hunsaker Hawkins, and G. Thomas Couser. In
comparison to narratives of physical disease, however, narratives of
depression and other mood disorders have received less critical
attention, even though "memoirs of moods and madness" such as William
Styron's _Darkness Visible_ (1990), Kay Redfield Jamison's
_An Unquiet Mind_ (1995), and more recently Andrew Solomon's _The
Noonday Demon_ (2001) have also been widely read and reviewed, and now
form a popular sub-genre of the illness narrative.

To remedy this imbalance in the criticism, I am seeking submissions for
a volume of critical essays on depression (or mood disorders more
generally) and narrative. I am NOT looking for personal narratives,
which can be found in anthologies such as Nell Casey's _Unholy Ghost:
Writers on Depression_, 2001. The following is a list of possible topics
and directions; however, other suggestions are welcome:

-- critical studies of particular depression narratives

-- cultural narratives and metaphors shaping depression talk

-- narrative aspects of the depression experience (eg. David Karp's
notion of the
    depression "career" in _Speaking of Sadness_, 1996)

--depression as narrative interruption/ rupture

-- the depression narrative and gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age

-- the depression narrative as testimony—as critique—as therapy

-- stigma and confession/ "outing"

-- negotiating diagnosis and medication—narrative and illness identity

-- psychiatric narratives of depression

Please send proposals (1 page) to Dr. Hilary Clark at
clarkh_at_sask.usask.ca. Mailing address: Dept. of English, University of
Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada S7N 5A5. Phone: (306) 966-5515.
Fax: (306) 966-5951.

Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2004.

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Received on Fri Aug 20 2004 - 15:45:38 EDT