• The Anguish of Displacement: The Politics of Literacy in the Letters of Mountain Families in Shenandoah National Park, Katrina M. Powell. U Virginia P, 2008.
  http://www.upress.virginia.edu/books/powell.HTM
  "Following Congress's approval of the creation of the Shenandoah National Park in 1926, displaced Virginia mountain families wrote to U.S. government officials requesting various services, property, and harvested crops. The collection of 300 handwritten letters that resulted from this relocation reveals a complex dynamic between the people and the government and captures a moment in American history when the social, historical, and political climate was ripe for such uprooting. In The Anguish of Displacement: The Politics of Literacy in the Letters of Mountain Families in Shenandoah National Park, Katrina M. Powell explores the function of literacy as social and symbolic action and shows how these letters exposed multifaceted issues surrounding literacy, its use and disuse, and its power in documenting individual stories within the broader, overarching narratives about the Virginia landscape and the mountaineer.

  "Through rhetorical and socioliterary analysis, Powell examines what individual literate acts say about public educational practices, placing competing discourses about the region's history alongside contemporary literacy theory. Through this approach, she both uncovers the complexities of gender, material condition, and education in determining and resisting social position and contributes to evolving theories of literacy and identity, arguing for their inextricable link." (03/08)

• Biography: A User's Guide, Carl Rollyson. Ivan R. Dee, May 2008.
  More info here (04/08)

• Economists' Lives: Biography and Autobiography in the History of Economics, eds. E. Roy Weintraub and Evelyn L. Forget. A book supplement of the journal History of Political Economy (39:X), January 2008.
  "This collection of essays brings together prominent scholars from economics, sociology, literature, and history to examine the role of biography and autobiography in the history of economics. The first of its kind, this volume looks at the relevance of first-person accounts to narrative histories of economics. The essays consider both the potential and the limits of life writing, which has traditionally been used sparingly by historians of economics, and examine types of biographies, the relationship between autobiography and identity, and the writing of biography.

  "Contributors to this collection question whether biography is essential to understanding the history of economic ideas and consider how autobiographical materials should be read and interpreted by historians. Articles consider the treatment of autobiographical materials such as conversations and testimonies, the construction of heroes and villains, the relationship between scientific biography and literary biography, and concerns related to living subjects. Several essays address the role of biography and autobiography in the study of economists such as F. A. Hayek, Harry Johnson, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Oskar Morgenstern, and Francois Quesnay, concluding with several accounts of the interconnection of the historians' projects with their own autobiographies." (01/08)

• New In Love and Struggle Letters in Contemporary Feminism, Margaretta Jolly. Columbia UP, 2008.
  http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-13792-8/in-love-and-struggle
  "This is a smart and savvy book -- a fascinating study of what letters have meant to women as writers and readers over the past four decades. Situating letter writing as both demand and gift and mapping the feminist ethic of care that developed from this vast personal archive, In Love and Struggle is essential reading for feminist cultural projects." Julia Watson, Ohio State University.
  "Although a number of feminists have written nostalgically, theoretically, or descriptively about second-wave feminism, no one has considered the extensive connections among the form of the letter, the ethics and expression of care, and social movements. Jolly's analysis will appeal to any member of the general public who is fascinated by the letter, women's movements, and relationships among women." Cynthia Huff, Illinois State University. (03/08)

• Out of Chaos: Reflections of a College President and his Contemporaries on Vietnam-era Unrest in Mankato and its Relevance Today, James F.Nickerson. Eds. Suzanne L. Bunkers and Ann Rosenquist Fee. Minnesota State University Foundation, 2006.
  "By the late 1960s and early 1970s, opposition to the war in Vietnam was well established across the United States. But nowhere was the intensity as high as it was on college campuses. Some of that fervor resulted in violence, and at Kent State University in Ohio, four students were killed when the National Guard was called in to counter the mass of protesters.

  "Campuses across Minnesota saw turmoil as well, but Mankato State College was the regional hotbed of anti-war activism. Students engaged in silent marches and candlelight vigils. They took over Old Main Administration Building. They blocked Highway 169 and the Veterans' Memorial Bridge. There were bomb threats, canceled classes, and days when more students were protesting than sitting in lecture halls. Veterans attending the college started a group called Veterans Against the War, and this organization would eventually go national.

  'The key figure on the Mankato State College campus was Dr. James Nickerson, who served as president of Mankato State College from 1966 to 1973. Out of Chaos is an edited collection of personal remembrances as well as James Nickerson's personal reflections." (03/08)

• The Seven Deadly Virtues and Other Lively Essays: Coming of Age as a Writer, Teacher, Risk Taker, Lynn Z. Bloom. U South Carolina P, April 2008.
  "Essayist Phillip Lopate says of The Seven Deadly Virtues, 'A fascinating book by a dedicated master teacher who practices what she preaches, by putting herself on the line and her life vividly on the page, this sophisticated, self-reflexive take on autobiographical writing should clarify and illuminate many of the dark corners of creative nonfiction.'" (04/08)

• Teaching Life Writing Texts,, eds. Miriam Fuchs and Craig Howes. Options in Teaching Series, Modern Language Association, March 2008.
  "Howes and Fuchs have spanned a remarkable breadth in terms of where their writers come from, the sorts of schools they teach in, and the life writing issues on which they focus. The result is a veritable gold mine for both teaching and research." Susanna Egan, author, Mirror Talk: Genres of Crisis in Contemporary Autobiography.
  "The past thirty years have witnessed a rapid growth in the number and variety of courses and programs that study life writing from literary, philosophical, psychological, and cultural perspectives. The field has evolved from the traditional approach that biographies and autobiographies were always about prominent people--historically significant persons, the nobility, celebrities, writers--to the conception of life writing as a genre of interrogation and revelation. The texts now studied include memoirs, testimonios, diaries, oral histories, genealogies, and group biographies and extend to resources in the visual and plastic arts, in films and videos, and on the Internet. Today the tensions between canonical and emergent life writing texts, between the famous and the formerly unrepresented, are making the study of biography and autobiography a far more nuanced and multifarious activity.

  "This volume in the MLA series Options for Teaching builds on and complements earlier work on pedagogical issues in life writing studies. Over forty contributors from a broad range of educational institutions describe courses for every level of postsecondary instruction. Some writers draw heavily on literary and cultural theory; others share their assignments and weekly syllabi. Many essays grapple with texts that represent disability, illness, abuse, and depression; ethnic, sexual and racial discrimination; crises and catastrophes; witnessing and testimonials; human rights violations; and genocide. The classes described are taught in humanities, cultural studies, social science, and language departments and are located in, among other countries, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, Eritrea, and South Africa." (03/08)

• This Crazy Thing a Life: Australian Jewish Autobiography, Richard Freadman. U Western Australia P, August 2007.
  "Jews have been in Australia since the First Fleet. They have come from many lands - some in relative comfort, others in utter destitution. Their stories of survival, arrival, adaptation and participation constitute one of multicultural Australia^Os great ethnic narratives. Australian Jews have written about three hundred book-length autobiographies. Richard Freadman's remarkable This Crazy Thing a Life: Australian Jewish Autobiography is the first ever comprehensive study of this large, varied and fascinating body of work.

  "The autobiographies range from humble self-published monographs to acclaimed narratives by professional writers like Lily Brett, Jacob Rosenberg and Arnold Zable. Freadman offers superbly nuanced readings of major works. He also surveys the field as a whole, tracing demographic trends, recurrent themes, the impact of the Holocaust, and issues of gender, genre, testimony, truth-telling and literary value. There are accessible discussions of humanist and postmodern approaches to Holocaust memoir, migrant narrative and ethnic minority writing, together with background information about Judaism and the Australian Jewish diaspora. The final section of the book is an anthology of short excerpts featuring both renowned and lesser-known writers.

  "Written for a general audience, this rich and impassioned book makes an important contribution to our understanding of Australian Jewish lives, and of Australian lives more generally.

  "This is a superb and groundbreaking study of the narratives Australian Jews have written about their lives. Erudite but accessible for the general reader, it is a marvellous account of Jewish experience, here and in the many places from which Australian Jews have come." Sir Zelman Cowen

  "This Crazy Thing a Life: Australian Jewish Autobiography is a penetrating and humane study of the art of autobiography. With its salt sting of particular testimony - Australian Jewish Holocaust experience - it is both critique and profound tribute: Freadman honours the lives and tenacity of writers who have wrenched memory out of darkness and given it voice. This book is a triumph of scholarship and clear-eyed humanity - exhilarating, generous, discriminating, and resonant with hope." Morag Fraser (10/07)

• Unfitting Stories: Narrative Approaches to Disease, Disability, and Trauma, eds. Valerie Raoul, Connie Canam, Angela Henderson and Carla Paterson. Wilfred Laurier UP, Waterloo ON, Canada. (05/07)

• Unruly Bodies: Life Writing by Women with Disabilities, by Susannah B. Mintz. U North Carolina P, September 2007.
  "The first critical study of personal narrative by women with disabilities, Unruly Bodies examines how contemporary writers use life writing to challenge cultural stereotypes about disability, gender, embodiment, and identity.

  "Combining the analyses of disability and feminist theories, Susannah Mintz discusses the work of eight American autobiographers: Nancy Mairs, Lucy Grealy, Georgina Kleege, Connie Panzarino, Eli Clare, Anne Finger, Denise Sherer Jacobson, and May Sarton. Mintz shows that by refusing inspirational rhetoric or triumph-over-adversity narrative patterns, these authors insist on their disabilities as a core--but not diminishing--aspect of identity. They offer candid portrayals of shame and painful medical procedures, struggles for the right to work or to parent, the inventive joys of disabled sex, the support and the hostility of family, and the losses and rewards of aging. Mintz demonstrates how these unconventional stories challenge feminist idealizations of independence and self-control and expand the parameters of what counts as a life worthy of both narration and political activism. Unruly Bodies also suggests that atypical life stories can redefine the relation between embodiment and identity generally." (06/07)

• Visibly Different: Face, Place and Race in Australia, ed. Maureen Perkins. Peter Lang: Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2007.
  Authors: Jan Teagle Kapetas, Jean Boladeras, Lynette Rodriguez, Wendy Holland, Christine Choo/Antoinette Carrier/Clarissa Choo/Simon Choo, Glenn D'Cruz, Farida Tilbury, Hsu-Ming Teo, Ien Ang.

  "A new direction in Australian life writing, of interest not only to those of 'mixed race' descent, but also to those interested in connections between identity, culture and power more generally. The Introduction is enormously valuable, succinct and provocative, offering a terrific summation of the field. An important contribution to the wider field of mixed race studies." -- Jacqueline Lo, Australian National University

  "A varied and interesting selection which shows how 'race' operates in the lived experience of various 'mixed race' Australians. It shows at the level of everyday life how a concept which most theorists claim has no scientific reality is able to have a constant, powerful role in the lives of people on a daily basis. [...] It is not a rehearsal of complaints about racism, but a study 'from the field' of how attitudes to race impact on the process of living." -- David Moody, Murdoch University. (08/07)

Canadian Academic Presses/Presses universitaires canadiennes: Browse the online listings at the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion.