1. Memoir and Manifesto: Life Writing and/as Resistance

At first thought, the memoir and the manifesto seem to lie at opposing ends of the literary spectrum in terms of form, audience, and purpose. The former, embracing more intimate modes of written expression, draws on personal experience and memories to articulate selfhood most often from a necessarily subjective perspective while addressing no one in particular. The latter, written as a call to action, speaks to a community sharing a common ethos and aims to enlighten, to inspire action, and to impel change. This panel considers examples of women authors of French expression who have used the space of life writing as a means of protest and resistance. Seeking an outlet for self-expression, women have long embraced the freedom of and resistance afforded by autobiographical projects as an introspective conduit allowing them to voice their experiences and work through and against hegemonic conceptions of their role and place in society. Julia Watson and Sidonie Smith, in De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women’s Autobiography, for example, have pointed out that women, like other minorities engaged in such projects, are able to “celebrate through countervalorization another way of seeing, one unsanctioned, even unsuspected, in the dominant cultural surround” (p. xx). How do life narratives and personal stories insert themselves into movements of resistance? How do the personal and the political collide within these narratives? To what degree does the self-focus nature of life writing act as subterfuge for achieving more resistance-minded objectives? Please send 250-word proposals, in English or French, to Adrienne Angelo ama0002@auburn. edu by May 15, 2018.

Chair: Adrienne Angelo, Auburn University, <ama0002@auburn.edu>

Call for Papers

Women in French Sessions

2018 South Atlantic Modern Language Association Conference

Birmingham, Alabama

November 2-4, 2018

Please send a 250-word abstract in French or English, including presenter’s academic affiliation, contact information, and A/V requirements by May 15, 2018.

For more information on SAMLA and the annual conference, please visit the conference website:  https://samla.memberclicks.net/

In addition to registering as a member of SAMLA and also for the SAMLA conference, presenters must also be current on their membership in Women in French. You may visit (http://www.womeninfrench.org/) to become a member or renew your membership.