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Page Index (Jump To):

• Journals
  
• Centers, Programs, and Degrees
  
• Research and Bibliography Resources
  
  • Literary, Historical, Philosophical
    
  • Psychology and Psychobiography
    
  • Oral History Resources
    
• Information and Discussion Lists
  
• Conference and Publication Opportunities
  
• Recent and Forthcoming Books of Interest
  
• Biographical Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, and Specialty Reference Sources
  
  • General Reference
    
  • Arts and Entertainment
    
  • Government and Politics
    
  • Religion and Hagiography
    
  • Science and Technology
    
  • War and Peace
    
  • Women
    
  • Others
    
• Related Journals, Journal Databases, and Index Sources
  
  • Journals
    
  • Journal Databases and Index Sources
    
• Cultural Resources
  

JOURNALS:

• a/b: Auto/Biography Studies: "A journal of scholarship devoted to autobiography, biography, diaries, letters, and relations between lifewriting and other discourse."

• Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly
  • Searchable Bibliography of Life Writing: 1996 - present (forthcoming)

• Journal of Historical Biography by the University College of Fraser Valley

• Journal of Medical Biography: This journal "is concerned with topics of shared interest between the medical sciences and the arts" and is "aimed at a wide audience among both the medical and non-medical community."

• Life Writing: Exploring the Contemporary Meanings of Life Narrative by Curtin University of Technology.

• Narrative Inquiry: Formerly the Journal of Narrative and Life History, this journal is "devoted to providing a forum for theoretical, empirical, and methodological work on narrative."

• Le Journal Personnel: Bibliography, 1938 - present.

CENTERS, PROGRAMS, AND DEGREES:

• Center for Autobiographic Studies: CAS is "dedicated to promoting the knowledge, appreciation, creation, and preservation of contemporary autobiographic works."

• Centre of Life History Research at the University of Sussex

• H-Memory: "a discussion network open to all academics and researchers concerned with Memory Studies. This inter-disciplinary field interests itself in how humans remember and represent that memory, be it through literature, monuments, historical works, or in their own private lives."

• Life Writing Research Unit at Curtin University of Technology

• The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography in Vienna

• MA in Biography at the University of Buckingham

• MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmith's College, London

• MA in Life Writing at East Anglia University--Norwich

• Master of Biography at Monash University

• Prosopography Centre: Modern History Research Unit, University of Oxford. "The Centre is dedicated to the study and promotion, and, where necessary, development, of the disciplines and methods of medieval prosopography."

• Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography at La Trobe University: "A full program of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, seminars, conferences, academic visitors, etc."--Richard Freadman

RESEARCH AND BIBLIOGRAPHY RESOURCES:

• Literary, Historical, Philosophical:
  • Auteures acadiennes/Acadian Women's (Life) Writing

  • Autopacte: Managed by Philippe Lejeune, Autopacte provides extensive bibliographies on a variety of lifewriting topics, listings of journals in several languages which publish lifewriting criticism and theory, and notices of conferences and colloquia as well.

  • Biography and History: a solid listing of heavyweight materials.

  • In the First Person: "This release of In the First Person provides in-depth indexing of more than 2,500 collections of oral history in English from around the world. With future releases, the index will broaden to identify other first-person content, including letters, diaries, memoirs, and autobiographies, and other personal narratives. The database is free!"

  • ipseite: Systematic inventory of personal diaries and notebooks published or translated into French from the Renaissance to the 3rd millenium.

  • Who's Got the Story? Memoir as History/History as Memoir: A series of events at the University of Minnesota

• Psychology and Psychobiography:
  • The Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern: The Center is "a small interdisciplinary research center dedicated to studying personality and social development in adulthood, with a special emphasis on the development of such prosocial characteristics in human lives as generativity, altruism, social commitment, and wisdom."

  • Narrative Psychology: Internet Resource Guide at Le Moyne College: "This guide provides a broad set of bibliographical and Internet-based resources for use in the study of narrative psychology and has been designed both as an Internet-available document for researchers generally and partially to be used within an advanced undergraduate psychology seminar."--Vincent Hevern

  • Psychobiography.com: "My aim with all this is twofold. First and foremost, I want to provide a quality resource for those interested in the field I adore: psychobiography. . . . Second, I do want to use this site as a way of making my own writing more easily available."-- Todd Schultz

• Oral History Resources
  • Center for Oral History at the University of Hawai`i: Established in 1976, "COH preserves the recollections of Hawai`i's people through oral interviews and disseminates oral history transcripts to researchers, students, and the general community."

  • From Memory -- New Zealand's War Oral History Programme

  • Indiana University: Center for the Study of History and Memory. "The Center for the Study of History and Memory began its existence in 1968, when the "Oral History Project" was founded by Oscar O. Winther as an initiative to collect the history of the University itself. The enormous potential of oral history as a research and pedagogical tool was quickly apparent, and the project expanded as other research studies were added to its growing archive. When John Bodnar became the project's director in 1981, he changed the Oral History Project's name to the Oral History Research Center to reflect its broadened scope and its mission to preserve, collect, and interpret 20th-century history through the medium of first-person testimony."

  • The New Orleans Disaster Oral History and Memory Project

  • Oral History Archives of World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War at Rutgers: "The Rutgers Oral History Archives of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Cold War, directed by Sandra Stewart Holyoak, is an enterprise to record the personal experiences of the men and women who served on the home front and overseas." Currently featuring 312 oral histories, the Project "is an enterprise to record the personal experiences of the men and women who served on the homefront and overseas. It is based on in-depth interviews of individuals who lived through World War II, beginning with an initial group of Rutgers College alumni and Douglass College alumnae (formerly, New Jersey College for Women)."

  • The Oral History Association at Dickinson College. "The Oral History Association, established in 1966, seeks to bring together all persons interested in oral history as a way of collecting human memories."

  • Oral History Program at Cal. State Long Beach: "This Program, housed in the Department of History, is designed to teach and train history students in the use of materials that focus on largely unwritten sources."

  • Oral History Research Office at Columbia University: Founded in 1948 by Allan Nevins, "the oral history collection now contains over 7,000 taped memoirs, and over 700,000 pages of transcript." The Office "is the oldest and largest organized oral history program in the world."

  • Out in the Redwoods: GLBT Oral History Website at UC Santa Cruz.

  • Regional Oral History Office at UC Berkeley: Established in 1954, ROHO's "major subject areas include law and government, arts and letters, business and labor, social and community history, University of California history, natural resources and the environment, and science and technology."

  • The Southern Oral History Program at UNC: SOHP "seeks to foster a critical, yet democratic understanding of the South--its history, culture, problems, and prospects."

INFORMATION AND DISCUSSION LISTS:

• The Biographer's Craft: "If you write, edit, publish, sell, or just like to read biographies, you will want to subscribe to The Biographer's Craft, a free, monthly newsletter about biographies, biographers, and the craft of writing biographies."

• iaba-l: The International Auto/Biography Association discussion and information list for Life Writing.
  • The entire archive of iaba-l from inception in 01/01 is available and searchable by month and by keyword here: https://listserv.hawaii.edu/archives/iaba-l.html

• The International Auto/Biography Association's website

CONFERENCE AND PUBLICATION OPPORTUNITIES:

• Lifelines: CBR's listing of upcoming conference and publication calls.

• Literary Calls for Papers Archive at Penn: Archived from the LCP mailing list: cfp@english.upenn.edu

• RECENT AND FORTHCOMING BOOKS OF INTEREST

  BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARIES, ENCYCLOPEDIAS, AND SPECIALTY REFERENCE SOURCES:

  • Biographies Online: A massive index with copious numbers of links to all areas of life writing.

  • LifeNarrative.net: The Life Writing Site: "This is a site which is primarily designed as a freely accessible archive of life writing articles, book reviews and other resources."

  • General Reference:
    • The American History Page: Biographies at About.Com.

    • American Memory website of American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920: This Library of Congress website "is comprised of 253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American Apeoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920. Also included is the thirty-two-volume set of manuscript sources entitled Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, published between 1904 and 1907 after diligent compilation by the distinguished historian and secretary of the Wisconsin Historical Society Reuben Gold Thwaites."

    • The Biographical Dictionary Online: Keyword search of more than 28,000 brief biographical notes online.

    • Biographical Resources at the New York Public Library.

    • Biography-Center: Keyword search of more than 27,000 biographies online.

    • Chinese Biographical Database: Keyword search of more than 3,500 biographies online.

    • Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online

    • Infoplease's People Page: Biographical sketches of Supreme Court justices, world leaders, and more.

    • Links to Native North American Biography Sites.

    • Lives: The Biography Resource: "The largest guide to posthumous biography sites on the Web."

    • MemoryWiki: The Encyclopedia of Memories: Everyone has a story. Make yours history.

    • New Books in Nineteenth-Century Studies at USC: "Our goal is to be a comprehensive interdisciplinary guide to scholarship on nineteenth-century Britain."

    • New Dictionary of National Biography: "A collection of 50,000 specially written biographies of men and women who have shaped all aspects of the British past . . . will be published in print and electronic forms in 2004."

  • Arts and Entertainment:
    • A&E's Official Biography Home Page Site

    • Authors on the Web: "This page is an attempt to bring together literary author biographies available on the World Wide Web. The biographies vary in quality, timeliness, length and authority."

    • Brief Biographies of American Architects: "Between 1897 and 1947 the American Art Annual and its successor volume Who's Who in American Art included brief obituaries of prominent American artists, sculptors, and architects. During this fifty-year period, the lives of more than twelve-hundred architects were summarized in anywhere from a few lines to several paragraphs."

    • Children's Literature Web Guide: Authors and illustrators of children's literature on the Web.

    • The Classical Music Pages

    • Classical Net: Composer Master Index: "This index lists those composers for which there is a dedicated page at this site that may include biography, recommended works, recommended recordings, and other related reviews and articles."

    • The Norwegian Jazz Base

  • Government and Politics:
    • Biographical Directory of the US Congress: Keyword search of every congressional member since 1774. Biographical notes and bibliographies of published works.

    • Biographical Sketches of US Secretaries of Defense

    • Biographies of British Prime Ministers from Walpole to Thatcher

    • The First Ladies of the US: Biographical sketches of every spouse.

    • The Labadie Collection at Michigan: "The 115 manuscript collections are strongest in the correspondence and essays of anarchists but also include a growing body of material documenting post World War II social protest issues."

    • The Political Graveyard: Find out a little about dead politicians, judges, and diplomats and where they're buried.

    • Marxist Writers: A Library of the Marxists Internet Archive.

    • Presidential (US) Libraries Master Directory

    • Presidents of the US

  • Religion and Hagiography:
    • Biographical Sketches of Memorable Christians of the Past: "James E Kiefer is a quiet soul whose day job is in a government research laboratory, but who enriches all of us by using his spare time to write down the stories of the people who, through the centuries, have made the Christian church what it is today."

    • Biography of Prophet Muhammad

    • Catholic Encyclopedia's List of Popes: Complete listing with biographical sketches.

    • Catholic Online Saints Index: "An exhaustive list of Saints that contains all known information pertaining to each Saint."

    • Christian Biography

    • Christian Biography Resources

    • Notable American Unitarians

    • Société des Bollandistes on Christian Hagiography

  • Science and Technology:
    • African Americans in the Sciences: Biographical sketches of significant figures, including the areas of physical and biological sciences, and inventors.

    • American Nursing Association Hall of Fame: "The ANA Hall of Fame is a lasting tribute to nurses whose dedication and achievements have significantly impacted the nursing profession throughout the years."

    • Biographical Information in Science, Health, and Engineering: at ASU.

    • Catalog of the Scientific Community in the 16th and 17th Centuries: "This catalog is a collection of 631 biographies of members of the scientific community during the 16th and 17th centuries with vital facts about each individual and his/her contributions to science."

    • Communications Pioneers Biographical Dictionary: "The focus of this initial effort is individuals contributing to the art of audio engineering."

    • Great Canadian Scientists: "This short list of great Canadian scientist in-depth profiles was developed . . . to reflect a balance of discipline, region and gender. We also tried to keep to 'Scientists' rather than engineers, doctors or inventors--though there were a couple of exceptions."

    • History of Astronomy: "The following pages include not only astronomers, but also persons with relation to astronomy. Scholars from other fields who did investigations in astronomy, makers of astronomical instruments, etc."

    • A History of Evolutionary Thought: "The list . . . includes scientists and thinkers who have contributed to our understanding of life on Earth, especially, evolution. The list is given chronologically, and is divided into sections according to themes in the history of evolutionary thought."

    • History of Mathematics Archive: Alphabetical and chronological search of biographies of more than 1100 mathematicians.

    • Institute and Museum of the History of Science of Florence: "The biographical texts . . . are all of personalities in some way connected to the figure of Galileo. Their contents aim at underlining the relationship of each personality with Galileo himself."

    • The Invention Dimension at MIT: Inventor of the Week archives.

    • Inventors Home Page at About.Com

    • Lasker Foundation: Living Library Home Page: "Read about former Lasker Award winners and learn about the discoveries that made them famous: interviews, images, award citation, scholarly papers, and biographical sketches."

    • The Revolutionaries: On turning inspiration into innovation in Silicon Valley: "Revolutionaries takes a new look at the inspiration behind 18 of Silicon Valley's top technology and science pioneers--the men and women who forged ground-breaking research, products or businesses, often in the face of long odds and seemingly insurmountable hurdles."

    • NASA Astronaut Biographies

    • Science Biography Resources: at Chicago.

    • Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science: Biography Project.

  • War and Peace:
    • The American Civil War Homepage at the University of Tennessee: Comprehensive assemblage of net sources devoted to every aspect of the Civil War, including personal accounts, diaries, letters, photos, and much more.

    • The Center for the Study of the Korean War

    • Daughters of the American Revolution Home Page

    • Gandhi Archive

    • Kings College London Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives: "The Centre holds private papers of over 500 senior defense personnel who held office in [the 20th] century. Individual collections range in size from a single file to the 1000 boxes of Capt. Sir Basil Liddell Hart's papers. To these are now being added research materials, notably interview transcripts, collected in connection with television documentaries and academic projects."

    • Korean War Commemoration

    • Korean War Project

    • The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford

    • National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution Home Page

    • Spy Letters of the American Revolution: From the Clements Library Collection at Michigan.

    • U.S. Army Center of Military History: Full-text Listings of Medal of Honor Citations.

    • War, Peace, & Security WWW Server: The Military History Page at the Canadian Forces College.

    • The World War I Biographical Dictionary at Kansas.

  • Women:
    • 4000 Years of Women in Science: "This is an alphabetical list. You may also access a time-ordered list and now, finally, a field of study ordered list."

    • American Women's History: A Research Guide: General Reference and Biographical Sources; Subject Index to Research Sources; State and Regional History Sources; Finding Books, Journal Articles, Theses; Finding Primary Sources; Digital Collections of Primary Sources.

    • Biographies of Women Mathematicians: "These pages are part of an on-going project by students in mathematics classes at Agnes Scott College, in Atlanta GA, to illustrate the numerous achievements of women in the field of mathematics."--Larry Riddle

    • A Celebration of Women Writers at Penn.

    • Civil War Women at Duke: Biographies, diaries, letters, important documents, and photos and prints.

    • Distinguished Women: Past and Present: Biographies and numerous links to related sites.

    • The Emancipation of Women: British History 1700-1920: Biographies and numerous links to related sites.

    • The International Association of Labour History Institutions: Women's and Gender History: "In the past few years, the relationship between women and labour issues, gender and class, socialism and sexuality, feminism and socialism has frequently been the subject of conferences, workshops and publications of labour history institutions. IALHI recently published on its website a new section with information on gender related materials in IALHI members collections."

    • Military Woman Home Page: "Serving past, present, and future women in the military," this is a kind of journal/message board/scrapbook of messages/vignettes posted by women inquiring about, serving in, or retired from all branches of the US military.

    • Past Notable Women of Computing & Mathematics: Compiled by The Ada Project at Yale: "Honoring the close connection between mathematics and computing, TAP provides information on pioneers in both areas."

    • The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

    • Spanish Women Writers: Biographical sketches and bibliographies of works (in Spanish).

    • Women in Science--Biographies: "The biographies are sorted by topics and also by alphabetical order."

    • Women: Special Collections: A subcategory of the "Lives: The Biography Resource" link above. Links to a wide variety of women by historical categories.

    • The Women's History Network founded in Britain in June 1991.

    • The Women's International Center: Bios of their Living Legacy Award winners and other "exceptional humanitarians."

    • Women's Legal History Biography Project at Stanford: This site "grows out of Professor Barbara Babcock's course at Stanford Law School on Women's legal history." The "primary purpose . . . is to extend the historiography of women as lawyers in the United States."

  • Others:
    • crimelibrary.com

    • The Crime Web: The Serial Killer Website

    • Famous Jews Interactive

    • Francophonies canadiennes: Identites culturelles

    • The Handbook of Texas Online: Search by Subject.

    • Indiana Biography

    • The Jewish Virtual Library: Biographies.

    • Mamiya Medical Heritage Center: Physicians in Hawai`i: Biographical sketches of physicians who worked in Hawai`i from the early 1800s up to 1985--and more.

    • The Nobel Prize Internet Archive: Brief sketches of all winners in all categories with links to news articles, photos, interviews, and more.

    • Norwegian-American Immigration and Local History

    • The Pulitzer Prizes: With a searchable archive of all winners since 1917.

    • State Humanities Councils: An excellent resource for life-writing project funding support.
      • Hawai`i Council for the Humanities: "In addition to conducting humanities projects for Hawai`i's communities, the HCH gives grants for humanities projects for the general public that are planned and conducted by non-profit groups. The Committee is providing, on a temporary basis, small grants for preservation and publications by non-profit organizations and research by individuals."

      • Hawai`i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts: "The State Foundation on Culture and the Arts provides public funds to help support projects designed to preserve and further culture and the arts, history and the humanities throughtout Hawai`i."

    • The Window: Philosophers: A select group of biographies with links to others.

  RELATED JOURNALS, JOURNAL DATABASES, AND INDEX SOURCES:

  • Journals:
    • Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies

  • Journal Databases and Index Sources:
    • Project Muse: Scholarly journals online at Johns Hopkins.

  CULTURAL RESOURCES:

  • The Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Mississippi: "Over the past 20 years the Center . . . has become a focal point for innovative education and research on the American South."

  • Cultural Studies Central: "We . . . want to make CSC your 'portal' to the electronic cultural studies world, so you will have immediate access to the other most prominent CS sites and discussion lists . . . ."

  • The Hawaiian Historical Society, including The Hawaiian Journal of History.

  • Joe Ryan's U.S. State Historical Societies & State Archives Directory.

  • Internet Indian History Sourcebook

  • Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.

  • The Working Lives Website at the University of Sydney: " Working Lives draws together contributors examining a range of labour biography subjects and methodologies, including: labour history and narrative identity, trade union leadership, labour intellectuals, studies of the justices of the NSW Industrial Commission and a progress report on the Biographical Register of the Australian Labour Movement--which includes entries on 2,000 labour activists. Several entries on pioneering women activists can also be found at this page."