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Special issues

Browse all special issues from a/b: Auto/Biography Studies.

All issues
Life Writing at the Crossroads: Autobiographical Theory and Practice in Poland
Volume 38, Issue 3, 2023 pages 611-766
Mapping Black Women's Geographies
Volume 38, Issue 2, 2023 pages 417-616
Teaching Life Writing: Theory, Methodology, and Practice
Volume 37, Issue 3, 2022 pages 375-553
Comic Lives
Volume 37, Issue 2, 2022 pages 225-373
Un/Bound
Volume 36, Issue 3, 2021 pages 515-677
The Textualities of the Auto/biogrAfrical
Volume 35, Issue 3, 2020 pages 519-800
Migration, Exile, and Diaspora in Graphic Life Narratives
Volume 35, Issue 2, 2020 pages 295-518
Life Writing in the Anthropocene
Volume 35, Issue 1, 2020 pages 1-293
Trans Narratives
Volume 34, Issue 1, 2019 pages 1-165
Lives Outside the Lines: Gender and Genre
Volume 33, Issue 3, 2018 pages 503-III
Embodiment
Volume 33, Issue 2, 2018 pages 267-501
Special Issue: Excavating Lives
Volume 32, Issue 3, 2017 pages 459-715
What's Next? The Futures of Auto/Biography Studies
Volume 32, Issue 2, 2017 pages 135-457
Teaching Lives: Contemporary Pedagogies of Life Narratives
Volume 32, Issue 1, 2017 pages 1-133
Essay Cluster: Indigenous Autobiographical Writings in the Americas
Volume 31, Issue 3, 2016 pages 417-637
Essay Cluster: Biofictions
Volume 31, Issue 1, 2016 pages 1-190
Broken Dialogues
Volume 30, Issue 2, 2015 pages 199-ebi
Auto|Biography across the Americas
Volume 30, Issue 1, 2015 pages 1-198
“Framing Lives”
Volume 29, Issue 1, 2014 pages 1-185
Biopics and American National Identity
Volume 26, Issue 1, 2011 pages 1-179
The Work of Life Writing
Volume 25, Issue 2, 2010 pages 157-311
Paul John Eakin and James Olney: A Festschrift
Volume 23, Issue 1, 2008 pages 1-163
Epistolarity in the Twenty-First Century
Volume 21, Issue 1, 2006 pages 1-159
Life Writing and the Generations
Volume 19, Issue 1-2, 2004 pages 1-324
Adoption Life Writing: Origins and Other Ghosts
Volume 18, Issue 2, 2003 pages 163-330
Remembered Lives
Volume 16, Issue 1, 2001 pages 1-160
Private Lives/Public Texts: Women's Literary Diaries and Journals
Volume 17, Issue 1, 2001 pages 1-159
Autobiographical Que(e)ries
Volume 15, Issue 1, 2000 pages 1-165
Autobiographical Que(e)ries
Volume 15, Issue 2, 2000 pages 167-331
EXTREMITIES: MEMOIRS AT THE FIN DE SIÈCLE
Volume 14, Issue 1, 1999 pages 1-160

Special issue information

Proposal Guidelines: Special Issues, Essay Clusters, and Forums

The editors of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies welcome proposals for special issues, essay clusters, and forums. Proposals are typically submitted by a scholar or collaborative team that has prior experience in publishing and/or editing scholarship in the field.

Special Issues include an introductory essay contributed by the guest editor(s) and scholarly essays related to the issue theme, which are selected and edited by the guest editor(s).

Special issues may also include one or more of the following sections, decided upon together by the guest editor(s) and the editorial team at a/b:

  • a methodological essay for “The Process” section;
  • a pedagogical essay for “The How Would You Teach It?” section;
  • a solicited reflection;
  • a solicited contribution to the “What’s Next?” section—which is typically written by a senior scholar and is related to the future/s of the theme discussed in the special issue;
  • and/or a forum.

An Essay Cluster is a shorter version of a special issue and may contain any of the same components listed above. Typically, an essay cluster includes three to four contributions and an introductory essay contributed by the guest editor(s).

The editors of a/b define a Forum as a collection of eight to twelve shorter essays (3,000 to 4,000 words) on a single author, theme, or theory. The forum is meant to put into conversation multiple authors on a topic that is especially timely, underexplored, or would particularly benefit from such a multifaceted approach. A forum submission may be made as a standalone piece or may be incorporated as part of a special issue or essay cluster.

Proposals for special issues, essay clusters, or forums should include:
  1. a cover letter that explains clearly and in detail the proposed topic and its significance as well as the prior experience of guest editor(s) that will allow them to undertake the proposed project;
  2. Draft Call for Papers or detailed overview of proposed content, as warranted; and
  3. Curriculum Vita for all guest editor(s).

All proposals for special issues, essay clusters, or forums should be submitted to the General Editor, Ricia Anne Chansky, at [email protected].


Reviews of a|b's special issue on African American Life Writing ( 27.1, ed. Eric D. Lamore) available in:
  • Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies - by Margarita Carretero González
    'the interdisciplinary nature of this volume reveals the long and fruitful road travelled in the areas of African American autobiography and literary criticism since the eighties'

  • American Studies in Scandinavia - by Liz Kella
    'Lamore views the current issue as forming a collective response to subsequent critiques of these early delimitations of the field, and indeed, in dialogue with earlier scholarship and theory, the volume as a whole expands the field in terms of subject matter, method, and theory'

  • Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies - by Ted Bailey
    'a new subtle shift in direction can already be detected in the subject matter of many of the articles [in this special issue] that deal with the late twentieth and early twenty-first-century'