View the detailed conference program here.
| Date/Time | Event |
| Thursday June 4 | |
| 8-10am | Registration & Breakfast (Ehrlicher Room, North Quad 3rd Floor) |
| 8:30-10am | Graduate Student Workshop (Osterman Common Room, 202 S. Thayer, Room 1022) |
| 10-10:30am | Welcome: Sara Blair, vice provost and professor, University of Michigan; Sidonie Smith, professor of and director, Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan; Julia Watson, professor emerita, The Ohio State University |
| 10:30am-12pm | Keynote: Ruth Behar, “We Are All Somebody: Celebration of the Human Voice” (Ehrlicher Room) |
| 12-1:30pm | Lunch (Ehrlicher Room) |
| 1:30-3pm |
North Quad 2185: Evidence or Exposé? Kimberly Hall, “My Image, My Selves: Encountering Eleanor Antin’s Autobiographical Archive” Kate Douglas, “Reading Isadora Faber’s Diário de Classe” Sarah Brophy, “Disturbing Selfies and Participation in Counter-Historical Art Exhibitions: Kara Walker’s ‘A Subtlety, or the Marvellous Sugar Baby’” North Quad 2175: Translating Bodies Buffy Turner, “Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Strategic Encounter, and Male-dominated Archival Spaces” Jussara Fraga Portugal, “Memórias, Experiências de Vida, Formação e Profissão: Histórias de Professores de Geografia do Sertão do Sisal” Rainer Goetz, “Issues of Gender and Genre in Catalina/Antonio de Erauso’s life-story” North Quad 1185: Inter-generational Encounters Vicki Hallett, “Life Writing among the Inuit of Labrador: Telling Encounters” Nicole Poppenhagen, “Transpacific Kin Work: (Re)Defining and (Re)Imagining Family Ties in Chinese American Family Memoirs” Melissa Baldwin and May Chazan, “Writing Lives, Re-Writing Narratives: Ageing, Activism, and the Archive” North Quad 1265: The Spectacle of Lives Weverton Andrade, “A Autobiografia no Processo de Criação da Cena Espetacular ‘Araci’” John Wayne Pereira, “The Relationship Between the Work and Life of Amácio Mazzaropi: Art Contaminates Life” |
| 3-3:30pm | Break (Ehrlicher Room) |
| 3:30-5pm |
North Quad 2185: Collaborative Approaches to Narrating Lives (lightning round) Sergio Barcellos, “Projeto Vida por Escrito: Rediscovering Carolina Maria de Jesus through Her Archive” Ricia Anne Chansky, “Unwitting Collaborator: Remediating Posthumous Narratives” Lynn Z. Bloom, “Negotiating Collaboration” Craig Howes, “Three’s Company–Triordination and the Geometry of Autonomy” Cynthia Huff, “Imagined Communities and Collaboration” Tom Smith, “Re/Defining Collaboration” North Quad 2175: Self-narration as Professional Training Ana Cristina de Oliveira Pereira, “Narrar a Vida, Desvelar a Profissão: O Memorial como Dispositivo de Investigação-Formação” Simone de Oliveira and Elizeu Clementino de Souza, “Percursos de Professores Universários: Memórias e Histórias de Professores da Roça” Jussara Fraga Portugal, Simone Santos de Oliveira, and Mariana Martins Meireles, “Narrativas de Professores em Formação: Diversas Linguagens e Aprendizagens Geográficas” Telma de Souza Garcia Grande, “A Way to Reflect in Service about the Reflexive Model Practiced in Pre-service with English Students in a Letters Course at UEMS, in a Public University in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil” North Quad 1185: Archiving State Violence Orly Lael Netzer, “Something Fierce: Documented Li(f)es” Maria Faini, “Traveling Mills, Pulping Uniforms, Abandoning Paper: The Combat Paper Archive” Lisa Ortiz-Vilarelle, “Patremoir as Post-Dictatorial Counter-tour: Angelita Trujillo’s Publicly Private Nostalgia” |
| 6:30-8pm | Welcome Reception, Institute for the Humanities, 202 S. Thayer |
| Friday June 5 | |
| 7:30-8:30am | Registration and Breakfast (Michigan League, 2nd floor concourse) |
| 8:30-10am | Keynote: Vincent Carretta, “Uncovering Lives: the Biographical Challenge of the Early Black Atlantic” (Michigan League Ballroom, 2nd Floor) |
| 10-10:30am | Break (League Concourse) |
| 10:30am-12pm |
North Quad 2185: Creating Communities: Digital Ecosystems Diane Laurier, “The Use of Digital ‘Creative Accounts’ Conducted Among Aboriginal Artists in Contemporary Arts for the Well-being of Young Adults Descendant of First Peoples” Michael Humphrey, “Quantifying A Life Story In Digital Ecosystems: Content Analysis on Cowbird.com” Michigan League, Vandenberg Room (2nd Floor): Performing Biographical Spectacles Alberto Tibaji, “Theatre and Auto/biography: From Testimony to Performance” Candida Rifkind, “The Life in Revue: The Spectacular Archive of Vaudeville Visual Biographies” Karen Mozingo, “‘A Live Girl’: Performing the Queer Space of Exile in Valeska Gert’s Cabaret” Michigan League, Michigan Room (2nd Floor): Archives Across Distance Ricia Anne Chansky, “Dying in Nepal: Corporeality in Jamaica Kincaid’s Among Flowers” Yaël Schlick, “Autobiography and the Plural Author: The Case of Richard Byrd’s Alone” Lisa Brown, “We Meet Again!: Researcher, Subject and Text in Caribbean Life Writing” |
| 12-1:30pm | Lunch (League Ballroom) |
| 1:30-3pm |
North Quad 2185: Encountering Digital Lives Joel Haefner, “Erasing Life Narrative” Laurie McNeill, “Documentary Encounters: Auto/biographical Archives and Digital Technologies” Elizabeth Rodrigues, “Got Narrative?: Data Collection and the Narrative Aesthetics of Self” Michigan League, Vandenberg Room: Encounters in the Early Black Atlantic Eric Lamore, “Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative as Fluid Text: Isaac Knapp’s 1837 Boston Edition” Christine Levecq, “The Many Lives of Jacobus Capitein” John Saillant, “New Light for the Blind African Slave” Michigan League, Michigan Room: Place, Translation, and Encounter Emily Woster, “Reading as (Autobiographical) Encounter, Technology, and Method for Women Writers, 1880-1940” Eleanor Ty, “Asian Fail?: Cultural Translations in Jan Wong’s Out of the Blue” Nicole Stamant, “Having to Invent that Home in Language: Encounters and Belonging in The Black Notebooks” Michigan League, Hussey Room (2nd Floor): Encountering Autobiography as Method Ana Cristina de Oliveira Pereira, “O Fazer Autobiográfico na Universidade: Potencialidades do Ensino como Prática de Investigação-Formação” Luis Gómez González, “Autobiographical Writing: Proposed as a Methodology and an Epistemology for First-Person Research” |
| 3-3:30pm | Break (League Concourse) |
| 3:30-5pm |
North Quad 2185: Posthuman Life Narratives Justin Joque, “Who We Will Have Been: The Subject in the Digital Auto-Archive” Julie Rak, “Inuit Vibrant Matter: Mini Aodla Freeman’s Life Among the Qallunaat and Machine Ecology” Cynthia Huff, “Unpacking the Pact” Michigan League, Vandenberg Room: Politics of the Archive Suely Quintana, “Female Voices of the 1973 Chilean Dictatorship” Craig Howes, “Co/labor/action–Alicia Partnoy and the Politics of Editing” Michigan League, Michigan Room: Bodies in Flux Ana Roncero Bellido, “Teaching through Testimonio: A Pedagogy of the Flesh” Kate Browne, “Body by Numbers: Weight Loss Memoir as Biopolitical Technology” Shannon Finck, “Bodies at Liberty: Encounters with the ‘I’ Outside in Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote” Michigan League, Hussey Room: Memoir: Boom or Bust? Debra Parker, “Memoir as an Archive of Loss” Heidi Bollinger, “From Acclaim to Shame: The Reader-Reception of Fake Memoirs” Megan Brown, “Three Cups of Neocolonialism: Memoirs of Empire” |
| 5:15-6:30pm | Presentation and gallery tour with Amanda Krugliak, curator for the Institute for the Humanities Gallery. (Institute for Humanities Gallery, 202 S. Thayer, Room 1010) |
| 7:30-9pm | Film: Searching for Sugar Man (Osterman Common Room, 202 S. Thayer, Room 1022) |
| Saturday June 6 | |
| 7:30-8:30am | Breakfast (League Concourse) |
| 8:30-10am | Keynote: Leigh Gilmore, “Rigoberta Menchú: Slow and Fast Time in the Testimonial Archive” (League Ballroom) |
| 10-10:30am | Break (League Concourse) |
| 10:30am-12pm |
North Quad 2185: “Unsettle”: An SNS Roundtable Emily Johnston, “Endocrine Disruption and Embodied Difference in Spectacular Auto/Biography” Eva Karpinski, “Thinking in the Moment: A Pitch for Radical Pedagogy” Sarah Brophy, “Curating the Self” Bethany Mannon, “How Memoirs Unsettle Fiction” Elizabeth Rodrigues, “Counting Lives” Michigan League, Vandenberg Room: Graphic Dilemmas Bilge Mutluay Cetintas, “Facing Demons: Lynda Barry’s Graphic Life Narrative” Sheng-mei Ma, “The Fate of Accidental Taiwanese: Gene Luen Yang’s Graphic Novels” Michael Mosher, “High School Comics: Teenage Autobiographical Postures in Revolutionary Ann Arbor’s Graphic Story Journal” Michigan League, Michigan Room: Reading American Captivities Delphine Fongang, “Hegemonic Encounters: Retelling Enslavement and Finding Agency in Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” Zeinab McHeimech, “Islamic Hermeneutics of Dhikr in Malcolm X’s Autobiography and ‘Umar ibn Said’s Slave Narrative” Tom Smith, “‘One of Us’, But Who Is ‘Us’?: The Mediations of Mary Jemison” Michigan League, Koessler Room (3rd Floor): Migrations across Ideologies and Identities Ioana Luca, “Post-Socialist Encounters in Contemporary American Life Writing” Sergio Barcellos, “Projeto Vida por Escrito – The Lives of Carolina Maria de Jesus Through her Fictional Writings” |
| 12-1:30pm | Lunch (League Ballroom) |
| 1:30-3pm |
North Quad 2185: Activating Other Histories Laura Brown, “Art/i/facts: Finding an I Between Art and Facts in Reinaldo Arenas’s El palacio de las blanquísimas mofetas” Linda Morra, “Autobiographical Texts, Archives, and Activism: The Jane Rule Fonds, Her Memoir, Taking My Life, and The Body Politic” Magdalena Zaborowska, “Archiving Invisible House: James Baldwin and Black Queer Encounters with Domesticity” Michigan League, Vandenberg Room: A Stage of Her Own: Masks and Faces in Autobiographical Plays by Women Melissa Lee, “‘Miss Treadwell Portrays Herself at 60 in a New Play’: Modes of Self-Dramatization” Jirye Lee, “Facing Herself on Stage: Lenelle Moïse’s Womb Words, Thirsting” Lesley Ferris, “The Pains that Push My Pen: Alice Childress and Staging a Life” Michigan League, Michigan Room: Radicalizing Life-Writing Pedagogy Theresa N. Rojas, “The Unthinkable Mind: Lynda Barry’s Autobifictionalography as Mirror Box Therapy” Doug Bush, “Catharsis and Empathy as Learning: Bridging the Queer and Straight Audiences of Rigoberto González” Shermaine Jones, “‘The House of My Childhood’: The Pedagogical Function of Violence and Ethics of Rage in the Autobiographies of Malcolm X and Angela Davis” Michigan League, Koessler Room: Claiming Lives in Contested Spaces Jocelyn Stitt, “Nature, Space and Citizenship in Recent Caribbean Women’s Autobiographies” Lee Behlman, “Harriet Martineau’s Americas” |
| 3-3:30pm | Break (Michigan League, 2nd floor concourse) |
| 3:30-5pm | Keynote: Leonor Arfuch, “Memoria, testimonio, autoficción. Narrativas de infancia en dictadura” “Memory, Testimonio, Auto-fiction. Childhood Narratives under Dictatorship” (Michigan League Ballroom) |
| 5:15-6:15pm | Business Meeting (Osterman Common Room, 202 S. Thayer, Room 1022) |
| 6:30pm | Bus to banquet dinner at Matthaei Botanical Gardens (leaving from Thayer Building, 202 S. Thayer) |
| 7pm | Banquet Dinner, Matthaei Botanical Gardens |
| Sunday June 7 | |
| 7:30-8:30am | Breakfast (Michigan League, 2nd floor concourse) |
| 8:30-10am |
North Quad 2185: PhotoGraphics, Memory, and Loss Yu-Min (Claire) Chen, “Archiving the Self: Eileen Chang’s Self Writing in Photos, in Words and in Self-translation” Samuel Kamara, “Technological Encounters: Framing the Sierra Leonean Civil War” Eva Karpinski, “IndigenUS: The Concentric Weaves of Auto/Biography in Shelley Niro’s Photography and Film” Michigan League, Henderson Room (3rd Floor): Pentacostal Subaltern Memory and Archival Practices Lloyd Barba, “A Borderlands Archive: Gleaning Materials from the Fields” Erica Ramirez, “Text and Subtext: Private Archives and Secret Oral Histories” Daniel Ramirez, “Can the Pentecostal Subaltern Remember? Ethical Stakes at Play in Archival Practice” Michigan League, Michigan Room: Encountering Brazilian Children’s Lives Maria da Conceição Passeggi, Simone Rocha, and Luciane de Conti, “Narrativas da Infância: A Experiência de Crianças Hospitalizadas” Gilvete de Lima Gabriel and Maria da Conceição Passeggi, “Crianças e Professoras de Três Etnias Indígenas da Amazônia: Que Sentidos Dão a Escola?” |
| 10-10:30am | Break (League Concourse) |
| 10:30-noon |
North Quad 2185: Versions of Prominent Lives Olga Aksakalova, “Textual Versioning as Method to Explore Crisis and Autobiography” Alexander Bonar McKee, “Documenting Displacement in Brian Coffey’s Self Books” Lynn Domina, “Sacred Cipher: Kateri Tekakwitha and the Technologies of Canonization” Michigan League, Henderson Room: Archival Sites and Communities Bethany Mannon, “Encountering Afghan Women’s Narratives in a Mediated Online Space” Krista Roberts, “Encountering the Ribbon: Personal Stories Told through Pink Ribbon Marketing” Krista Quesenberry, “Rethinking the Self-Reflexive Archive with Margaret Anderson” Michigan League, Michigan Room: Encountering Environmental Crises Molly Pulda, “Deep Roots: Autobiographical Encounters of Environmental Loss” John Zuern, “Trashed-Out Biography: Abandoned Archives, Salvaged Stories, and the Pitfalls of Profiling in Paul Reyes’s Exiles in Eden” |
| 12:00pm | Trip to Detroit (bus leaving from Thayer Building) |
