[Shashi Bhusan Nayak]

Scripting Selves: New Directions in Life Writing
Editors: P. Muralidhar Sharma & Shashibhusan Nayak

Until recently, Life Writing has emerged as a loose critical label encompassing a variety of genres, including biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, letters, and dairies. The later decades of the 20th century, in particular, have witnessed a surge of sustained scholarly interest in the area. Biographies, autobiographies, letters, and diaries from the European tradition, with their authoritative stance and universalist assumptions, have now begun to be questioned. The proliferation of life writing by writers from formerly colonized and marginalized cultures has drawn attention to alternative possibilities of conceptualizing the self. Further, the emergence of a rich body of life narratives by women from such cultures has generated greater interest in the gendered understanding of marginality. Life narratives by African-American, Dalit and tribal women, public performers, captives, slaves and sex workers, among other peripheral groups, have revolutionized the way subjectivity was hitherto conceived. The grand-narratives of nation, religion, spirituality, justice, and God, have all come to be questioned and blatantly confronted. The emergence of New Media has radically revolutionized the concept of a coherent self. With its endless possibilities, the digital space has necessitated new modes of self-representation, thus calling into question the infallibility of the self enshrined in the act of writing. This edited volume will focus on the evolving landscape of life writing with an intention to explore innovative approaches that expand the boundaries of traditional life narratives. This interdisciplinary venture will explore the diverse and complex intersections of life writing with the questions of race, gender, class, imperialism, globalization, and transnationalism. We welcome contributions from scholars, researchers and academics from disciplines such as literary studies, cultural studies, history, anthropology, and medical humanities, to name but a few.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Self and Subjectivity in Life Writing
• Life Writing from the Margins
• Women’s Life Writing
• Hybridity in Life Writing
• Intermediality
• Self-Narration
• Identity Politics and Digital Culture
• Medical Narratives
• The Ethics of Self-representation
• Post-Human Perspectives in Life Writing
• Collaborative Life Writing

Important Dates:

Abstract Submission Deadline: March 31, 2025
Notification of Acceptance: April 15, 2025
Full Paper Submission Deadline: July 15, 2025

Submission Guidelines:

Chapters, in about 5000 words, inclusive of notes and references are invited.

Authors are also requested to submit an abstract for the chapter in about 200 words with a bio-note in about 50-75 words.

Chapters complete in all respects and in compliance with the latest edition of MLA guidelines should be sent as MS Word attachments to sharmamurali88@gmail.com and shashienglish@gmail.com. Contributors are encouraged to discuss any concerns relating to chapter length with the editors early in the writing process.

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