CFP: Special Issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, "Framing Lives"

The editors of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, in collaboration with Guest Editor Paul Arthur of the Australian National University, invite submissions for a special illustrated issue that grows from the 2012 International Auto/Biography Association Conference, "Framing Lives."

As the conference materials explain, contemporary scholarship has experienced an extraordinary turn to the visual in the study of life narratives. This can be seen in the research being conducted on graphics and animations, photographs and portraits, installations and performances, and avatars and characters that come alive on screens, stages, pages, and canvases, as well as through digital and analogue technologies.

All submitted essays should have a relevant theoretical framework and participate in contemporary conversations within the field of auto/biography studies. The editors welcome essays that explore visual narratives in diverse forms, including, but not limited to, the following topics:

Visual culture and visual rhetorics

Drawn, painted, photographed, sculpted, and stitched narratives

Graphic novels, artist books, illustration, and illustrated narratives

The praxis of image and narrative

Televised, filmed, and digitized life narratives

Web 2.0, websites, blogs, RPGs, Social networking sites, and other forms of new media

Archives, archival work, and digital archives

Museum studies, exhibitions, and the ethics of exhibiting

Performance, performing, and performative narratives

Spectacle, the viewer, viewing, and the gaze

The Other and other-ing through visual representation

Visualizing Colonialism and Post-Colonialism

The racialization or gendering of visual narratives

The new spaces and places of autobiographical narratives

Essays should be between 7,500 and 12,000 words in length, including notes and the Works Cited pages, and must follow the format of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (7th ed.). Authors must also include a fifty-word abstract and two to four keywords with their submissions.

All essays selected for the special issue will be double-blind peer reviewed by two additional scholars in the field. In order to ensure a blind peer review, remove any identifying information, including citations that refer to you as the author in the first person. Cite previous publications, etc. with your last name to preserve the blind reading process. Include your name, address, email, the title of your essay, and your affiliation in a cover letter or cover sheet for your essay.

Essays may include a maximum of eight illustrations. All submitted images must be 300dpi. Please note that it is the author's responsibility to secure any necessary copyright permission and essays may not progress into the publication stage without written proof of right to reprint.

Essays not published in the special issue may be considered as general submissions to a/b.

All inquires and submissions should be sent to Ricia Anne Chansky at ricia.chansky@upr.edu. Please attach submissions as word documents to your email. Submissions will be accepted through March 15, 2013.

Guest Editor, Paul Arthur, is the Deputy Director of the National Centre of Biography and Deputy General Editor of the Australian Dictionary of Biography at the Australian National University. He is inaugural President of the Australasian Association for Digital Humanities, and his recent books include Virtual Voyages (2010), the edited volumes Recovering Lives (2011), and, with Geoffrey Bolton, the award-winning Voices from the West End (2012). For more information about Dr. Arthur, see www.paularthur.com.

For more information on the International Auto/Biography Association, please visit their website at: http://www.theiaba.org/.