The Journal of Historical Biography, an international, peer reviewed, online publication is published twice annually, in spring and fall, and seeks original contributions on an ongoing basis. Articles embracing any aspect of historical biography are welcome, including biographical portraits of prominent individuals of any nation, and theoretical, methodological or philosophical pieces that reflect on the larger issues associated with writing biography or autobiography. Book reviews related to biographical works are also solicited. Notices of conferences, calls for papers, and similar academic notices will be accepted.

Submissions for our Autumn 2008 issue should be received by May 1, 2008.

For submission guidelines and other information, please contact us at jhb at ucfv dot ca

Deadline: 1 May 2008

Visible Memories Conference
Syracuse University
Oct. 2-4, 2008

Conference Theme: The Visible Memories Conference at Syracuse University invites papers for competitive selection. The conference will explore the intersections between visual culture and memory studies with particular focus on the ways in which memories are manifested and experienced in visible, material, or spatial form.

Examples of especially relevant and desirable research topics include: local sites of memory; memorials and archives; environmentalism and representations of nature; regional, national, or global tourism; photography or cinema; digital media; and art installations. We also welcome other research topics in similarly innovative areas. The Visible Memories Conference is presented by the Visual Arts and Cultures Cluster of The Central New York Humanities Corridor, made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Corridor is a large-scale partnership with Syracuse University, Cornell University, and the University of Rochester that connects scholarship in five other cluster areas: philosophy, linguistics, religions and cultures, musicology/music history, and humanities at the interface of science/technology.

Conference Format: The conference will feature an innovative combination of events designed to facilitate conversation not only between a variety of researchers concerned with the study of visual culture and memory but also between academics and distinguished professionals in art and design, film production, and institutional archiving.

Featured events will include:

A keynote lecture by conceptual artist Ernesto Pujol.

Plenary speakers:

Cara Finnegan (Speech Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign)
Andrea Hammer (Landscape Architecture, Cornell University)
George Legrady (Media Arts and Technology and Art, University of California at Santa Barbara)
Julia Meltzer (media artist)
Phaedra Pezzullo (Communication and Culture, Indiana University)
Gregory Sholette (Art and Art History, Queens College)
David Thorne (media artist)
Patricia Zimmermann (Cinema and Photography, Ithaca College)

Competitive panel sessions.

Research workshops and roundtables.

A gallery reception and film/video screenings.

Submission Guidelines: Submit a paper abstract electronically (500 word maximum). Include a separate cover page with paper title; author name and affiliation; and contact information.

Abstracts will be reviewed by the conference planning committee. Deadline for abstract submission is May 1, 2008. Acceptance notification will be sent by June 1, 2008.

Conference History: Syracuse University has been heavily involved in the study of public memory and visual culture for the past seven years. The university has previously hosted two major interdisciplinary conferences devoted to the themes of "Framing Public Memory" (2001) and "Contesting Public Memories" (2005). These events have attracted national and international scholars from such disciplines as Anthropology, Rhetorical Studies, Philosophy, Writing, Geography, and Art. As a result of these efforts, the Syracuse University "Public Memory Project" has become a hub for collaboration among scholars from over a dozen departments and has hosted numerous individual scholars while supporting specific memory-related projects within the Syracuse community.

Travel and Accommodations: Syracuse University is located in the heart of Central New York, close to many major metropolitan areas (2.5 hours from Buffalo; 4 from Philadelphia; 4.1 from New York City; 5 from Boston; 5.4 from Pittsburgh). Conference participants may travel conveniently to Syracuse, NY, through Syracuse Hancock International Airport.

The conference will be held at the Renaissance Syracuse Hotel (315-479-7000; http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/syrbr-renaissance-syracuse-hotel/ ) . Other high-quality accommodations nearby include the Sheraton Syracuse (315-475-3000) and the Genesee Grande Hotel (315-476-4212).

See our conference website for further details: http://publicmemories.syr.edu/.

Additional questions about the Visible Memories Conference may be addressed to:

Dr. Anne T. Demo
Phone: 315-443-1032
E-mail: atdemo at syr dot edu

Deadline: 1 May 2008

Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography

We invite contributions for a proposed collection of essays on visual autobiography, focusing on health, bodies, and embodied subjectivities. The collection will consider how cultural practices of self-narration and self-portraiture image and imagine unruly bodies and, in so doing, respond to Patricia Zimmerman's call for "radical media democracies that animate contentious public spheres" (2000, p. xx).

How are health, dis/ability, and the body theorized, materialized, and politicized in visual autobiographies, including forms such as photography, video art, graphic memoir, film, body art and performance, and digital media? We are particularly interested in the potential of visual autobiographies to:

-explore how bodies negotiate disciplinary regimes and technologies
-produce counterdiscursive manoeuvres and new representational spaces
-investigate how power/knowledge relations constitute embodiments
-provoke critical and ethical reflection

We welcome contributions from academic- and arts-based researchers and practitioners. We encourage a wide range of critical perspectives: cultural studies, critical theory, disability studies, feminist studies, critical race studies, diaspora studies, queer studies, Aboriginal studies, globalization studies, literary studies, art history, music, media studies, theatre and performance studies. Analytic approaches could involve: textual analysis; histories, presents, and futures; practices and practitioners; and pedagogy.

Possible topics:

dis/ability
sickness/wellness
disease
bodies negotiating borders and boundaries
traded and disappeared bodies
trauma and testimony
memory and memorializing
monstrosity
care of the self
care-giving
fatness and body size
aging
body alterations and transformations
environments
activisms

Send a 300- to 500-word abstract, working title, and a brief bio, by email in a Word attachment, to Sarah Brophy brophys at mcmaster dot ca and Janice Hladki hladkij at mcmaster dot ca on or before May 15, 2008. Inquiries are also welcome. Final papers should range in length from 4000-8000 words.

About the editors: Sarah Brophy is an Associate Professor in English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University. Janice Hladki is an Associate Professor in Theatre and Film Studies, McMaster University.

Deadline: 15 May 2008

Demeter Press is seeking submissions for an edited collection on: Disability and Mothering

Publication Date: Spring 2010
Editors: Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jen Cellio

We are excited to be editing an interdisciplinary book on disability and mothering. We seek papers that explore the histories, practices, theories and lived realities of mothering and disability as they run parallel to, intersect with, complicate, and inform one another. Both disability and mothering are liminal experiences, placing one at a threshold or doorway, a boundary, verge, or margin that marks a potential interval of difference offering an opening to new perspectives. Doorways and thresholds represent spaces for transition and transformation, the possibility for sharing experiences and the fluidity of identity, in the crossing back and forth from one perspective to another. As a liminal experience, "mothering" can be thought of as an attitude or orientation, a set of practices arising out of relationality, rather than a stable identity. New reproductive technologies also expand definitions of "mothering," but also raise questions about the future of the fetus marked "disabled" as well as the lives of people living with disability in an age of genetic screening. A key goal of this volume will be to examine the productive tensions brought to view by pairing mothering and disability.

We welcome varied approaches from across the humanities and social sciences including, but not limited to:

* personal and reflective essays;
* theoretical, historical, cultural, feminist, maternal, transgender and queer studies;
* ethnographies;
* material cultural studies of such topics as -- Activism; bioethics, feminist ethics; constructions of identity, changes in identity, hybridity theories of identity; corporate workplace policies, insurance, day care, institutional care; disability/mothering in global and transnational contexts -- e.g. immigration, diaspora, citizenship, national identity, homelessness; embodiment theories; feminist philosophies of care, dependency, or interdependency; film and media representations; ideological and social debates and tensions within discussions of "good" mothering/disability; issues of mothering/disability as they intersect with race, class, gender, nation; legal or scientific histories; medical critiques; navigation of space, movement, access and design of spaces; "normalcy" as a construct that impacts mothering/disability; politics and public polices; poverty; queer and/or transgender theories; reproduction/ reproductive rights; the role of web communities; the spiritual, emotional or social impact; support services, self-sponsored communities and institutions.

Abstracts/Proposals (300-500 words) due: June 1, 2008

Acceptances made by June 30, 2008 Accepted and completed papers (15 pp. double-spaced, MLA format) due: September 30, 2008 Authors with disabilities, or who have family members with disabilities, are especially encouraged to contribute. Please send inquiries and abstracts, along with a brief CV, to: Editors, Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson at lewiecc_at_muohio.edu and/or Jen Cellio at celliojl_at_muohio.edu

About the editors:

Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson, the mother of an adult son, born with a disability, is a professor of English and Affiliate of the Women's Studies Program at Miami University. Her research and teaching focus on composition and rhetoric, disability studies, and feminism. She is the author or co-editor of articles, book chapters, and several books, among them, Disability and the Teaching of Writing: A Critical Sourcebook (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008); and Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture (Southern Illinois UP, 2001). She is a founder, with five other faculty, of the Disability Studies minor at Miami.

Jen Cellio is a Ph.D. candidate at Miami University where she studies rhetorical theory, rhetorics of science, women's rhetorics, and composition theory. Her dissertation, entitled "More children from the fit, less from the unfit": Discourses of Hereditary "Fitness" and Reproductive Rhetorics, post Darwin to the 21st Century, examines arguments used during the eugenics movement to curb or encourage the reproductive practices of particular groups of women.

Deadline: 1 June 2008

Special Issue: "Homoerotic, Lesbian and Gay Ethnic and Immigrant Histories"

The Journal of American Ethnic History, the official journal of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, announces its call for a special issue on "Homoerotic, Lesbian, and Gay Ethnic Immigrant Histories." Bringing together the well established field of ethnic history with that the more recently growing LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) history and culture, the issue seeks to explore how ethnicity, immigration, and sexuality inform one another in the making of identities, subjects, and communities. We seek articles challenging the assumption that immigration and settlement take form only along heterosexual or heteronormative arrangements, whether people^s movements across borders take place individually or in groups that include family units. We are especially interested in historically framed and empirically based articles that inform the creation of same-sex desires, identities and cultures among immigrants, but also bisexual, transgender, and other less fixed identifications when experiencing international border crossings and sexual desires. We also welcome contributions that bring to historiographical light new creative and critical primary sources that document the immigrant experiences of heretofore unknown "queer" ethnicities in the U.S. In all, the special issue seeks innovative historical scholarship that privileges the experience of diverse non-heteronormative sexual arrangements in the process of immigration for new ethnic Americans.

Deadline of receipt of manuscript: June 1, 2008

Manuscript submissions to the Journal should be in quadruplicate, a maximum of thirty-five pages, with endnotes on separate sheets and following the Chicago Manual of Style 15th edition (no electronic submissions). Prospective authors should include a brief 50-100 word bio suitable for the journal's "Notes on Contributors" section and a disk or CD containing files of both the bio and the article, prepared in IBM compatible MS Word 2003 format. Since manuscripts are sent out anonymously for evaluation, the author's name and affiliation should appear only on a separate cover sheet. In addition, prospective contributors are encouraged to obtain further information on the pmmigration and Ethnic History Society and the Journal of American Ethnic History at www.iehs.org or e-mail John Bukowczyk, Editor, JAEH, at aa2092_at_wayne dot edu

Please address all manuscript submissions and requests for the JAEH Stylesheet to:

Horacio N. Roque Ramrez, Guest Editor
Assistant Professor
Chicana and Chicano Studies Department
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4120
roqueramirez_at_chicst dot ucsb dot edu

Please note that the journal does not publish previously published material.

Deadline: 1 June 2008

The idea of decenterment signifies a major evolution of the very notion of subject, triggered by the philosophy of Nietzsche, which dominates poststructuralist and postmodernist thought. The omnipotent I, usually thought of as a physiological, grammatical and philosophical commodity, has been repeatedly questioned. Therefore, its internal topography seems nowadays to obey numerous agencies and undergo multiple transformations; in addition to that, psychoanalysis has long questioned any pretenses of a "homogenous" and "true" subject. If Nietzsche claimed that suggesting the existence of a unique subject was no longer necessary, would it be legitimate to suppose that there are multiple subjects and that their interaction is at the heart of our thought?

In fact, one could say that the decentered subject somehow tends to be reestablished by being relocalized: anti-subject practices of surrealism, the Nouveau Roman, the new autobiography and poststructuralism frequently go hand in hand with a certain reclaiming of subjectivity partly founded on the "solidity" of common sense. Even though the former are supposed to exclude the latter and vice versa, their almost inevitable complementarity keeps them together; that's probably why Charles Taylor (Sources of the Self) talks about a quasi paradox.

In this ongoing and everlasting process of re-subjectivization, the place held by the discourses of the body seems to be particularly important. Thinking (through) the body there is always a body and a self in the body, Nietzsche tells us incorporates the abstract and embodies the speculations of Theory. Hence the instrumentalized body is replaced by a bodiliness which becomes the site of the revisited subject. This kind of discourse often focuses on the metaphor of digestion. On the one hand, this metaphor can be the paradigm of every "bio-graphy", that is of a discourse which might be described in terms of an "orexis" or of an "eating well" which encourages us to "identify with the other, who is to be assimilated, interiorized, understood ideally" (Derrida, "Eating Well, or the Calculation of the Subject"). On the other hand, this very metaphor is equally present in the writing of "auto-bio-graphy", given that "a strong and successful man digests his experiences (his actions, including his evil actions) as he digests his meals" (Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals). This conference aims to explore the multiple facets of the disappearance and the resurgence of the subject placing special emphasis on the discourses of the body and of the self, in order to investigate what the neologism of the title, namely auto-bio-phagy, might mean. Given the interdisciplinary perspective of the conference, proposals focusing on philosophy, literature, visual arts as well as other disciplines within the humanities are welcome. Papers presented at the conference will be submitted to peer review in order to be included in a collective volume. The conference will be held in English and French.

Proposals (200-300 words) should be sent via email to May Chehab (mchehab_at_ucy.ac.cy) and Apostolos Lampropoulos (aplampro_at_ucy.ac.cy) before June 15, 2008. The draft program of the conference will be established early July 2008.

Deadline: 15 June 2008

Migrant sub-Saharan Literature

Deadline for submission : 30 June 2008

Subha Xavier (University of Miami, USA) and Papa Samba Diop (Universite de Paris XII, France) invite submissions for an edited volume entitled Migrant sub-Saharan Literature that will be published by Dominique Gueniot Editions in France. Articles should be 15 to 20 pages in length and address issues in sub-Saharan migrant literature from one of the following perspectives :

* Has migration favored literary creativity? How and why?
* What are the moral or thematic implications of migration in literary production?
* What is the relationship of migrant writers to editors in the host country?
* What are the positive aspects of migration where personal fulfillment or social acceptance is concerned?
* What are the negative aspects of migration where personal fulfillment or social acceptance is concerned?
* What is the relationship between different sub-Saharan migrant writers?
* What convergences or divergences can be perceived in their works?
* What types of relationships do migrant writers have with their country of origin?
* What is the nature of the political regime in power in the country of origin and what role does it play in migrant writing?
* What drives an author to migration?
* What differences can be drawn between migrant literary production and the literary works of authors who remain in Africa and are published by African Publishers?
* How can we theorize migrant sub-Saharan literature?
* Which theoretical paradigms are most useful to better understand the role and function of this literature?

Articles in English or in French may be sent to Subha Xavier (in English) xavier at miami dot edu or Papa Samba Diop (in French) diop at univ-paris12 dot fr by June 30, 2008.

Deadline: 30 June 2008

Roundtable on "The Subject and Critical Feminist Biography" in the Journal of Women's History
Call for Papers Date:2008-07-15

For a special issue of the Journal of Women's History on "Critical Feminist Biography," we invite short submissions (approximately 1000 words) for a roundtable on "The Subject and Critical Feminist Biography." In this roundtable, we ask scholars from various fields who have been engaged in biographical projects to reflect on how the subjects of feminist biography get consolidated. What sorts of "filters" operate through the process of biographical work, from a scholar's choice of subject to the pressures publishers may exert that result in highlighting some subjects and not others. Equally important, how are life histories written, in what forms do they emerge given scholarly commitments to issues of representation and silencing that feminist theory and praxis foregrounds?

Given that women, children, people of color, people of the global South, and other subjects deemed marginal to dominant historical narratives continue to have a vexed relationship to conventional archives-and given that such archives may continue to be constituted in ways that exclude such subjects-how do we write biographies of social actors whose "marginal" energies we want to highlight and interrogate? This question may become especially apposite when such subjects move across local, regional, and national borders, and/or if they do not appear to embody an autonomous, discrete subjectivity. When, as subjects of oral histories or interviews, they are actively co-producers of accounts of their own lives, what kinds of differences does this make in the production of biography and, as feminist scholars, what kinds of investments do we make in such co-productions and how do we (or ought we) to foreground the processes by which these life narratives come into being?

Another question that might be asked is: what nodes of reception surround (or haunt) biography written as a kind of feminist praxis? How do historians receive-and use-biography as a source? For historians who foreground gender and women, does biography continue to offer a useful arena for feminist historical scholarship, or does it as a genre risk overemphasizing the recuperative and celebratory aspects of earlier women's history? This question links back to that of the pressures on the biographer as a result of the multinational capitalist configuration of the publishing industry. What kinds of compromises must be made-if any-to move feminist biography outside of the academy? Can we articulate a feminist politics to a broader audience through biography?

Our due date for submissions to this roundtable is July 15, 2008. Editors for this special issue are Marilyn Booth and Antoinette Burton. Please send queries to womenshistory at uiuc dot edu.

Journal of Women's History
c/o Department of History
University of Illinois
810 South Wright Street
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217)244-6735

Email: womenshistory at uiuc dot edu.
Visit the website at http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_womens_history/guidelines.html

Deadline: 15 July 2008

Academic Autobiography, Intellectual History, and Cultural Memory in the 20th Century: An Interdisciplinary Conference

Proposals are sought for an Interdisciplinary Conference entitled "Academic Autobiography, Intellectual History, and Cultural Memory in the 20th Century" to be held at the University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain) on the 26-28 of March, 2009. This conference aims to engage the current paradigms of the debate on autobiographical writing by academics (historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and sociologists, among others) and analyze these in the interdisciplinary context of the consciousness of the ways intellectual history and cultural memory may be developed, articulated, and promoted in the twentieth century. Autobiographies by academics who have played important public roles and whose scholarship have shaped the ways we think about disciplines, society, culture, or politics -- such as Nancy K. Miller, Eric Hobsbawm, Clifford Geertz, Leila Ahmed, Edward Said, Jill Ker Conway, Ihab Hassan, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Yi-Fu Tuan, among others -- may be explored as new approaches to the discourses of intellectual history and culture in our age. We invite proposals that offer new ways to read these autobiographies and analyze their discursive possibilities in the historical, cultural, and academic contexts in which they were written.

Specific topics may include, but are not limited to: the academic as author/historian; academic life writing as history or cultural discourse; academic autobiography as intellectual history; life writing and the definitions of academic disciplines; the intersection between private and public lives in academic autobiographies; academic autobiography as a literary or historical genre; the ways in which the notion of literary or historical discourse may be rethought in the context of this form of writing; the ways academic autobiographies challenge our notions of historiography or literary analysis.

500-word abstracts and a 1-page CV must be submitted (email submissions preferred) before October 15, 2008 to the Conference Organizers at this address:

Prof. Rocio G. Davis
Modern Languages Department
University of Navarra
Pamplona 31080
SPAIN
Fax: 34-948-425636
Email: acadautobiography at yahoo dot com

Deadline: 15 October 2008

Samuel Johnson Tercentenary Symposium--Harvard 2009
Location: Massachusetts, United States

The year 2009 marks the 300th Blocked Memories/Disavowed Histories anniversary of the birth of Samuel Johnson. To commemorate the event, Harvard University's Houghton Library will host an international symposium to celebrate Johnson's manifold contributions to intellectual and creative cultures. The symposium, which will be held Thursday, August 27, through Saturday, August 29, 2009, will coincide with the opening of a major exhibition featuring rare books and manuscripts from the Mary & Donald Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Details will be announced over the next six months, so please check our website periodically: http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/houghton/conference_johnson.html

Thomas Horrocks
Houghton Library
Harvard University
Email: horrocks at fas dot harvard dot edu