Pub Date : 2022-10-27DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2133331
Marian Eide
Abstract As Joanna Bourke memorably observes: “The characteristic act of men at war not dying, it is killing.” 1 While many soldiers have killed in war without experiencing any significant psychological or ethical challenges, others, even those who kill in conditions justified militarily in the combat context, suffer the results not only of post-traumatic stress, but (less understood) of moral injury. Having killed places a combatant on the other side of an ontological divide. How do veterans who have undergone this kind of extreme and transformative experience understand themselves after experiencing the limit event of killing? The ways that veterans describe killing can inflect our understanding of life writing.
{"title":"Biography of Killing: Veterans Remember the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan","authors":"Marian Eide","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2133331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2133331","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As Joanna Bourke memorably observes: “The characteristic act of men at war not dying, it is killing.” 1 While many soldiers have killed in war without experiencing any significant psychological or ethical challenges, others, even those who kill in conditions justified militarily in the combat context, suffer the results not only of post-traumatic stress, but (less understood) of moral injury. Having killed places a combatant on the other side of an ontological divide. How do veterans who have undergone this kind of extreme and transformative experience understand themselves after experiencing the limit event of killing? The ways that veterans describe killing can inflect our understanding of life writing.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"53 Pt B 1","pages":"309 - 329"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76561830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-20DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2128261
Katarína Valentová
Abstract Carlos Giménez belongs to the most acclaimed Spanish authors of autobiographical comics. His series Paracuellos (1977) has been placed among the most relevant works regarding historical memory as it provides a testimony of the Spanish dictatorship and life among the walls of Francoist boarding schools. Throughout his oeuvre, Giménez addresses not only themes of historical and political affairs of each period, but he also confronts many social ills, offering a faithful portrayal of roughly four of the most tumultuous decades in Spanish history. This paper aims to revise Giménez’s graphic life narratives and the way he moves forward in time to construct significant milestones of his personal life story, inseparably embedded in the history of Spain. Through his unique style, which combines caricatured characters set in a black & white layout and his typical dose of skepticism, Giménez dissolves himself as a narrator and a character by means of multiple alter egos who challenge the premises of Lejeune’s autobiographical pact.
{"title":"Life in Pictures: Auto(Bio)Graphic ‘I’s of Carlos Giménez","authors":"Katarína Valentová","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2128261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2128261","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Carlos Giménez belongs to the most acclaimed Spanish authors of autobiographical comics. His series Paracuellos (1977) has been placed among the most relevant works regarding historical memory as it provides a testimony of the Spanish dictatorship and life among the walls of Francoist boarding schools. Throughout his oeuvre, Giménez addresses not only themes of historical and political affairs of each period, but he also confronts many social ills, offering a faithful portrayal of roughly four of the most tumultuous decades in Spanish history. This paper aims to revise Giménez’s graphic life narratives and the way he moves forward in time to construct significant milestones of his personal life story, inseparably embedded in the history of Spain. Through his unique style, which combines caricatured characters set in a black & white layout and his typical dose of skepticism, Giménez dissolves himself as a narrator and a character by means of multiple alter egos who challenge the premises of Lejeune’s autobiographical pact.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"79 1","pages":"211 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73535092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-19DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2123597
Samira Abdur-Rahman
In her essay for a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, “New Directions in African American Autobiography Studies,” Joycelyn Moody previews the major themes and interventions of her edited collection, A History of African American Autobiography (2021), published by Cambridge University Press. In the 2017 essay, Moody avers that “[a]fter four hundred years of Anglophone African diasporic life writing, avowing the humanity, interiority, and intelligence of people of African descent remains its central project.”1 Yet Moody notes that instead of “seeking to enlighten the someone will extend both of Andrews’ studies to cover this period—but anyone who attempts this will no doubt come to renewed respect for the work of William L. Andrews. No one has done nearly so much to help us come to just and probing readings of this body of work. Slavery and Class in the American South is a monumental study, and one we will continue to grapple with and learn from for years to come.
{"title":"Rev. of A History of African American Autobiography","authors":"Samira Abdur-Rahman","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2123597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2123597","url":null,"abstract":"In her essay for a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, “New Directions in African American Autobiography Studies,” Joycelyn Moody previews the major themes and interventions of her edited collection, A History of African American Autobiography (2021), published by Cambridge University Press. In the 2017 essay, Moody avers that “[a]fter four hundred years of Anglophone African diasporic life writing, avowing the humanity, interiority, and intelligence of people of African descent remains its central project.”1 Yet Moody notes that instead of “seeking to enlighten the someone will extend both of Andrews’ studies to cover this period—but anyone who attempts this will no doubt come to renewed respect for the work of William L. Andrews. No one has done nearly so much to help us come to just and probing readings of this body of work. Slavery and Class in the American South is a monumental study, and one we will continue to grapple with and learn from for years to come.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"65 1","pages":"586 - 591"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86520112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-18DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2126188
Nathaniel Otjen
Abstract Examining personal narratives written by field primatologists, this essay argues that habituation—the process of accustoming a free-living animal to the researcher’s presence—produces “habituated knowledges.” These knowledges and knowledge-making practices recognize other species as co-participants in knowledge production and rewrite the boundaries of the researcher’s self to include nonhuman study subjects.
{"title":"Habituated Knowledges: The Entanglements of Science, Species, and Selfhood","authors":"Nathaniel Otjen","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2126188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2126188","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Examining personal narratives written by field primatologists, this essay argues that habituation—the process of accustoming a free-living animal to the researcher’s presence—produces “habituated knowledges.” These knowledges and knowledge-making practices recognize other species as co-participants in knowledge production and rewrite the boundaries of the researcher’s self to include nonhuman study subjects.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":"355 - 383"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72627905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-18DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2130251
M. Godfrey, S. McCarthy
Abstract Lucy F. Simms was an educator who made the improbable possible for thousands of Black students in Virginia at the turn of the twentieth century, but she remains almost entirely unmapped in academic histories. This essay describes a community-university-K-12 partnership that produced a permanent exhibit and companion website that preserves Simms’ story, the school named in her honor, and the men and women whose lives were transformed by that space. It also explores the vitality of local spaces to the recovery of Black women’s lives and the value of digital and physical modalities in biographical and archival recovery projects.
露西·f·西姆斯(Lucy F. Simms)是一位教育家，她在20世纪之交让弗吉尼亚成千上万的黑人学生实现了不可能的目标，但她在学术历史上几乎完全没有被描绘出来。这篇文章描述了一个社区大学和k -12的合作伙伴关系，他们制作了一个永久性的展览和配套网站，保存了西姆斯的故事，以她的名字命名的学校，以及被那个空间改变了生活的男人和女人。它还探讨了当地空间的活力，以恢复黑人妇女的生活，以及数字和物理形式在传记和档案恢复项目中的价值。
{"title":"Race, Space, and Celebrating Simms: Mapping Strategies for Black Feminist Biographical Recovery","authors":"M. Godfrey, S. McCarthy","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2130251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2130251","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Lucy F. Simms was an educator who made the improbable possible for thousands of Black students in Virginia at the turn of the twentieth century, but she remains almost entirely unmapped in academic histories. This essay describes a community-university-K-12 partnership that produced a permanent exhibit and companion website that preserves Simms’ story, the school named in her honor, and the men and women whose lives were transformed by that space. It also explores the vitality of local spaces to the recovery of Black women’s lives and the value of digital and physical modalities in biographical and archival recovery projects.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"26 1","pages":"487 - 506"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89738791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-18DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2128631
Samraghni Bonnerjee
Abstract Elsie Knocker was the most photographed woman of the First World War, who also authored numerous (auto)biographies. This article deals with the incongruities in her life-writings and analyses not only why Knocker broke the “autobiographical pact,” but also what the incongruities reveal about feminist self-fashioning in women’s life-writing. Using feminist life-writing theories, this article finally argues that incongruities in Knocker’s (auto)biographies are her means of forging a new identity for herself.
{"title":"The Self-Fashioning of Identity: Incongruity and Self-Fashioning in the Life-Writings of Elsie Knocker","authors":"Samraghni Bonnerjee","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2128631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2128631","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Elsie Knocker was the most photographed woman of the First World War, who also authored numerous (auto)biographies. This article deals with the incongruities in her life-writings and analyses not only why Knocker broke the “autobiographical pact,” but also what the incongruities reveal about feminist self-fashioning in women’s life-writing. Using feminist life-writing theories, this article finally argues that incongruities in Knocker’s (auto)biographies are her means of forging a new identity for herself.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"331 - 353"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83308668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-12DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2123594
V. Rademacher
analysis is autobiographical, to my view Fournier does not always succeed in making the case that her life stories advance the scholarly project of her book. In works of autotheory, the autobiographical is necessary to deepen or complicate an engagement with theory, or vice versa, and no less a bar should be set for autobiographical criticism. That said, Fournier’s densely referenced and beautifully illustrated book will prove useful for readers who are looking for an overview of autotheory, and particularly for literary critics who seek to expand their knowledge of autotheory beyond the written word and into the dynamic world of the visual arts.
{"title":"Rev. of Biofiction: An Introduction","authors":"V. Rademacher","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2123594","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2123594","url":null,"abstract":"analysis is autobiographical, to my view Fournier does not always succeed in making the case that her life stories advance the scholarly project of her book. In works of autotheory, the autobiographical is necessary to deepen or complicate an engagement with theory, or vice versa, and no less a bar should be set for autobiographical criticism. That said, Fournier’s densely referenced and beautifully illustrated book will prove useful for readers who are looking for an overview of autotheory, and particularly for literary critics who seek to expand their knowledge of autotheory beyond the written word and into the dynamic world of the visual arts.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"3 1","pages":"388 - 393"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76363081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-11DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2123593
C. Hogarth
Antonia Wimbush’s study, Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile, aims to analyze and compare the representation of exile in the work of no fewer than six contemporary female authors (Kim Lefèvre, Gisèle Pineau, Nina Bouraoui, Michèle Rakotoson, Véronique Tadjo, and Abla Farhoud). The result is a very well-written analysis with an admirable clarity of expression and argument. It contributes to a growing number of studies (in English) of life writing in the French language. The popular notion of autobiography as a form of life writing is renowned for its francophone origins, and its propagation in contemporary academic work has been heavily associated with the work of Philippe Lejeune and his theorization of the “autobiographical pact.” By contrast, life writing is not a term that has a simple equivalent in other languages, including major world languages such as French. Thus, Wimbush’s discussion of the nuances that tie and separate life writing and autofiction—the term closest to life writing in the francophone world—in French and English (from Serge Dubrouvsy to Philippe Gasparini to Arnaud Schmitt) is especially beguiling and useful.1 Wimbush indeed notes that a corpus of work distinctly identified as autofiction in English has been unveiled by Hywel Dix (2018).2 The authors who Wimbush examines emanate from diverse areas of the Francosphere, including well-studied nations such as Algeria (Bouraoui) and the Caribbean (Pineau), and areas that are less well known in the Anglosphere, such as Lebanon (Farhoud) and Madagascar (Rakotoson). The broad, inclusive framework of this title allows ample Works Cited
{"title":"Rev. of Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile","authors":"C. Hogarth","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2123593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2123593","url":null,"abstract":"Antonia Wimbush’s study, Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile, aims to analyze and compare the representation of exile in the work of no fewer than six contemporary female authors (Kim Lefèvre, Gisèle Pineau, Nina Bouraoui, Michèle Rakotoson, Véronique Tadjo, and Abla Farhoud). The result is a very well-written analysis with an admirable clarity of expression and argument. It contributes to a growing number of studies (in English) of life writing in the French language. The popular notion of autobiography as a form of life writing is renowned for its francophone origins, and its propagation in contemporary academic work has been heavily associated with the work of Philippe Lejeune and his theorization of the “autobiographical pact.” By contrast, life writing is not a term that has a simple equivalent in other languages, including major world languages such as French. Thus, Wimbush’s discussion of the nuances that tie and separate life writing and autofiction—the term closest to life writing in the francophone world—in French and English (from Serge Dubrouvsy to Philippe Gasparini to Arnaud Schmitt) is especially beguiling and useful.1 Wimbush indeed notes that a corpus of work distinctly identified as autofiction in English has been unveiled by Hywel Dix (2018).2 The authors who Wimbush examines emanate from diverse areas of the Francosphere, including well-studied nations such as Algeria (Bouraoui) and the Caribbean (Pineau), and areas that are less well known in the Anglosphere, such as Lebanon (Farhoud) and Madagascar (Rakotoson). The broad, inclusive framework of this title allows ample Works Cited","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"27 1","pages":"407 - 411"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84543694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-11DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2123599
Adan Jerreat-Poole
Drawing disability studies and feminist theory into a study of reading practices, autobiography, and HIV + subjectivities, The Political Economy of Stigma is a fresh, fierce, and deeply necessary text for life writing scholars, memoir fans, and health/illness practitioners and activists. Ally Day’s 2021 book is a critical intervention into theoretical, popular, and medical discourse surrounding HIV. Her research revolves around two distinct reading groups in different cities: one, composed of AIDS service workers (ASOs) who identify with activism, and the other, a group of women living with HIV. Reading HIV + memoirs alongside memoirs by other disabled women, these groups generate critical knowledge of the medical industrial complex and demonstrate the negotiation between reader and text—both individually and collectively. While focusing her 5. Lackey, Biofiction, 25. 6. Lackey, Biofiction, 49. 7. Montero, “Speculative Subjectivities,” 167, 164. 8. Lackey, Biofiction. 9. Lackey, Biofiction, 81. 10. Lackey, Biofiction, 87. 11. Lackey, Biofiction, 116.
{"title":"Rev. The Political Economy of Stigma Stories of the Self: HIV, Memoir, Medicine, and Crip Positionalities","authors":"Adan Jerreat-Poole","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2123599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2123599","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing disability studies and feminist theory into a study of reading practices, autobiography, and HIV + subjectivities, The Political Economy of Stigma is a fresh, fierce, and deeply necessary text for life writing scholars, memoir fans, and health/illness practitioners and activists. Ally Day’s 2021 book is a critical intervention into theoretical, popular, and medical discourse surrounding HIV. Her research revolves around two distinct reading groups in different cities: one, composed of AIDS service workers (ASOs) who identify with activism, and the other, a group of women living with HIV. Reading HIV + memoirs alongside memoirs by other disabled women, these groups generate critical knowledge of the medical industrial complex and demonstrate the negotiation between reader and text—both individually and collectively. While focusing her 5. Lackey, Biofiction, 25. 6. Lackey, Biofiction, 49. 7. Montero, “Speculative Subjectivities,” 167, 164. 8. Lackey, Biofiction. 9. Lackey, Biofiction, 81. 10. Lackey, Biofiction, 87. 11. Lackey, Biofiction, 116.","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"46 1","pages":"393 - 396"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85388661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/08989575.2022.2154444
Gina Snooks
When located at the nexus of life writing scholarship and social justice education (SJE), auto|biographical portraiture is a critical and creative mode of inquiry that allows students to integrate personal experience with course subject matter. Thereby, providing an opening through which students can examine their own identity and various social locations, as well as their own embeddedness in structures of power, privilege, oppression, and injustice—the space where the personal and political meet. Indeed, at its core, life writing scholarship theorizes “the self, the subject, the body, memory, agency and identity as well as operations of trauma, belatedness, and witnessing,” as Sidonie Smith writes.1 Life writing scholarship teaches us about human suffering—but it also teaches us about human resiliency and resistance. The purpose of teaching difficult or traumatic subject matter is to help students learn how power and privilege operate in specific cultural, social, political, and historical contexts; and to understand its ongoing effects. As a pedagogical strategy, auto|biographical portraiture can be a meaningful (and intimate) medium to help students understand and to apply an intersectional analysis to issues of oppression, inequality, and injustice; which can be a catalyst for social justice transformation. I conceptualize auto|biographical portraiture as a mixed-method of inquiry that blends life writing praxis and arts-based visual methodologies in a form of visual life storytelling, thereby creating an evocative opening to theorize and express personhood using symbolism, metaphoric expression, iconography and visual narratives. According to Leavy visual images access parts of the subconscious differently than written text.2 Thus, when applied to life storytelling visual imagery adds an extra dimension to what can be known about a subject, including the self as the subject of inquiry. Moreover, in visual storytelling meaning is made both by the artist and in the audiences’ encounter with the art.3 In this way, auto|biographical portraiture is way of knowing that is in continual process. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154444
{"title":"Care-Filled Classrooms: Heart(Art)Full Life Writing Pedagogy","authors":"Gina Snooks","doi":"10.1080/08989575.2022.2154444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154444","url":null,"abstract":"When located at the nexus of life writing scholarship and social justice education (SJE), auto|biographical portraiture is a critical and creative mode of inquiry that allows students to integrate personal experience with course subject matter. Thereby, providing an opening through which students can examine their own identity and various social locations, as well as their own embeddedness in structures of power, privilege, oppression, and injustice—the space where the personal and political meet. Indeed, at its core, life writing scholarship theorizes “the self, the subject, the body, memory, agency and identity as well as operations of trauma, belatedness, and witnessing,” as Sidonie Smith writes.1 Life writing scholarship teaches us about human suffering—but it also teaches us about human resiliency and resistance. The purpose of teaching difficult or traumatic subject matter is to help students learn how power and privilege operate in specific cultural, social, political, and historical contexts; and to understand its ongoing effects. As a pedagogical strategy, auto|biographical portraiture can be a meaningful (and intimate) medium to help students understand and to apply an intersectional analysis to issues of oppression, inequality, and injustice; which can be a catalyst for social justice transformation. I conceptualize auto|biographical portraiture as a mixed-method of inquiry that blends life writing praxis and arts-based visual methodologies in a form of visual life storytelling, thereby creating an evocative opening to theorize and express personhood using symbolism, metaphoric expression, iconography and visual narratives. According to Leavy visual images access parts of the subconscious differently than written text.2 Thus, when applied to life storytelling visual imagery adds an extra dimension to what can be known about a subject, including the self as the subject of inquiry. Moreover, in visual storytelling meaning is made both by the artist and in the audiences’ encounter with the art.3 In this way, auto|biographical portraiture is way of knowing that is in continual process. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2022.2154444","PeriodicalId":37895,"journal":{"name":"a/b: Auto/Biography Studies","volume":"17 1","pages":"445 - 452"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88051916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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