y separately published work icon A/b : Auto/Biography Studies periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... vol. 35 no. 1 2020 of a/b : Auto/Biography Studies est. 1985 A/b : Auto/Biography Studies
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Two images locate this special issue. The first is the portrait on the cover of “Life Writing in the Anthropocene,” from Anna Laurent’s immersive installation Flora: Exploration to Extinction. This site-specific installation was commissioned for the corridors of the Exhibitionist Hotel in South Kensington, London, in 2018. Arranged on the saturated color of the emerald walls, the gilt frames emphasize the portrait presentation of black silhouettes of species of extinct or endangered flora, each accompanied by an information panel including the plant name, native ecology, and ecological pressures. Laurent chose black silhouettes to signify the absence of these plants in the landscape, as well as a historical reference to conventions of Victorian portraiture and nineteenth-century plant exploration, a period during which “species traveled the globe and luxurious images of flora were fetishized,” particularly in an era of perceived ecological abundance.1 Here, the gilt frames are surrounded by dried seed heads and leaves, preserved relics of plant life that are spray-painted gold. The specific silhouette we have selected for the cover is the miniature cactus Biznaguita (Mammillaria sanchez-mejoradae), which is endemic to one location in Neuvo León, Mexico. Its population has reduced by seventy-five percent in fifteen years and it is at risk of extinction due to illegal collection and climate change.' (Jessica White and Gillian Whitlock Introduction)

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2020 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
From the Miniature to the Momentous : Writing Lives through Ecobiography, Jessica White , single work criticism

'This article contemplates ecobiography, a little-researched form of life writing which depicts how human selves are supported and shaped by their environment. It details the author’s ecobiography of botanist Georgiana Molloy (1805–1843) and the plants she collected from the Southwest Australian Floristic Region, alongside an analysis of an Australian ecobiography, Kim Mahood’s Position Doubtful.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 13-33)
Period Rhetoric, Countersignature, and the Australian Novel, Thomas Bristow , single work criticism

'This article explores literary practices placing the writer in dialogue with the places he has inhabited recently while researching the Australian novel. This includes a fictocritical engagement with place-based Australian literature (via Xavier Herbert and Randolph Stow) and a maverick whizz through deconstruction and genre studies. Written in an elegiac mode punctuated by an environmental humanities countersignature, this example of period rhetoric embodies autobiography in the Anthropocene, the event horizon of human signature.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 35-61)
Writing Toward and With : Ethological Poetics and Nonhuman Lives, Stuart Cooke , single work criticism

'In this essay, the author argues that the appreciation of nonhuman poetic forms, or an “ethological poetics,” is a necessary but neglected mode of ecological relation, and is especially important in the Anthropocene. Motivated by his own creative practice—in particular, the composition of Lyre, a book of poems about different animals, plants, and landforms—he considers important examples of ethologically attentive poetics before outlining how his compositional method attempts to incorporate insights from the environmental humanities and animal studies. Rather than insisting on their essential difference from human worlds, the author argues for an attentive, ethical, and imaginative engagement with nonhuman lives, through which surprising and unusual forms of poetry might emerge.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 63-79)
Memoir and the End of the Natural World, Tony Hughes-d'Aeth , single work criticism

'This essay draws on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s essay “The Climate of History: Four Theses” to test the capacity of memoir to bear witness to the Anthropocene. The essay focuses on three texts that feature memoirs of childhood on the wheat frontiers in Canada and Australia—Wallace Stegner’s Wolf Willow (1962), Barbara York Main’s Twice Trodden Ground (1971), and Dorothy Hewett’s Wild Card (1990). As an instrument of colonization and Indigenous dispossession, the impact of wheat was catastrophic, and these memoirs engage with the particular sites and circumstances that shape acts of remembering “wheaten childhoods.”' (Publication abstract)

(p. 183-205)
As Closely Bonded as We Are:” Animalographies, Kinship, and Conflict in Ceridwen Dovey’s Only the Animals and Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy, Grace Moore , single work criticism

'Using the fiction of Ceridwen Dovey and Eva Hornung, this essay considers animalography as a medium to represent animal emotions, particularly when ties of kinship break down. It addresses the difficulties and power dynamics associated with speaking for nonhuman others, while engaging with Cynthia Huff’s cautions regarding the posthumanist life narrative.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 207-229)
A Triumphal Entry, a Stifled Cry, a Hushed Retreat, Rick de Vos , single work essay (p. 261-271)
Her Biography : Deborah Bird Rose, Stephen Muecke , single work biography (p. 273-277)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 28 Jun 2023 12:31:44
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