***** PLEASE NOTE EARLY DEADLINE FEBRUARY 2 ******
The following is a call for papers for the panel ‘Writing the self, Writing lives in Greco-Roman culture’, to be held at the 2010 APA meeting in Orange County, California. Abstracts must reach the APA office by 2 February (further instructions are at the end of this message). The full ‘annual meeting program guide’ (which includes guidelines for abstracts and ‘Form D’, which must accompany all submissions) is available online:
http://www.apaclassics.org/Newsletter/2008newsletter/09_AM_program_guide.pdf
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Writing the self, Writing lives in Greco-Roman culture
Over one hundred years now separate us from the original publication of the monumental overview of ancient and modern autobiography by Georg Misch (Misch, 1907). Meanwhile, the ‘death of the author’ has generated a fundamental critical shift and a variety of productive approaches to first-person narratives. On the one hand, major contributions in different fields have highlighted the performative aspect involved in the display of the self. Moving away from the Romantic notion of authorial sincerity, a new wave of criticism has focused on how the presentation of the authorial self in any given text is intimately connected with wider rhetorical, political and cultural strategies to which the text is bound. On the other hand, recent work has called into question the relevance of the concept of persona for the ancients (Mayer, 2003), arguing that on the whole, ancient readers assigned to the author the views expressed by the persona loquens. Focusing our discussion on ancient conceptions and constructions of autobiographical writing, it is the aim of this panel to bring renewed attention to the importance of the biographical persona as a subject and as a tool of criticism for both ancient and modern audiences.
First, contributors might explore how ancient authors conceived of autobiographical writing in its different forms and functions. What are the different media in which authors write about themselves and how does each genre influence the choice and shaping of autobiographical data that an author decides to share with his readers? What is worthy of memory when it comes to the self? What are the different rubrics under which the ancients discuss their lives? What are the differences and continuities between ancient and modern notions of autobiographical writing? Secondly, papers might examine how ancient readers responded to autobiographical statements. What role does the construction of a biographical persona play in the way the ancients approach literary texts? How are we to interpret the tendency of ancient readers to extract biographical information from first-person narratives eloquently analyzed by Mary Lefkowitz (Lefkowitz, 1981) and others? How do biographies of poets and writers transform and interpret the texts of the master author?
To begin to address these questions, we welcome contributions on different autobiographical genres, such as hypomnemata/ commentarii, apologies, memoirs/ confessions, letters and personal poetry, as well as texts, such as biographies and anecdotes, which illustrate the role of the biographical persona in ancient thought.
Abstracts must be received in the APA office by February 2nd, 2009. Please send two copies of form D and four copies of an abstract (following the instruction given above under ?Responsibilities of Individuals Submitting Abstracts by the February 2nd, 2009 Receipt Deadline?). Anonymous abstracts will be reviewed by the panel organizers.
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